


Our Finest Gifts We Bring

by tvsn



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, Catfishing, Community Theatre, Eventual Smut, Excessive Drinking, Liverpool (city), Loneliness, M/M, Misconceptions, Modern Romance, Secret Santa, derogating language, elaborate sexual fantasies, illegal gambling, laddish themes, urinals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-07-19 00:37:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16129952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvsn/pseuds/tvsn
Summary: John André has a bar tab, a bit part in a community theatre production, and the sort of job he feels justifies his problem drinking. When he pulls the name of one of the loathsome men on the sales floor in a holiday gift exchange, he comes on a rather cruel idea to amuse himself during an otherwise lonely Christmas, never expecting to completely fall for Benedict Arnold, the target of his  well-planned series of pranks.





	1. Sack

**Author's Note:**

> I know it is _September_ but the three things I most associate with the winter holiday showed up in my supermarket/newsfeed/various WhatsApp group chats in the past few days: Marzipankartoffeln (have fun with Google Translate and with expounding upon the multitude of German stereotypes interlard within that compound), Everton to Chelsea transfer rumours (not true … yet), and heated debate over whether or not José Mourinho will/ought to be made redundant (oh my bleeding heart.) I can practically hear silver bells ringing.
> 
> That all said I suspect you can guess what you are in for – that is right ladies and gents, fluff in the form of visions of sugar plums. I jest. It is the offbeat modern romance André and Arnold deserve, likely in the form of excessive commas and alliterations. I figure if I start now I’ll be done by the time you are unpacking presents.
> 
> Enjoy.

The weather, the sheer amount of it, served as a contradiction to what societal convention in all of its arrogance deemed holiday cheer. The coloured fairy lights strung up around the reception desk annoyed him as much as the stockings and Santa-hats thrown about without style on the lobby’s various cardboard displays of Caribbean holiday destinations, themselves making him feel colder by their suggested comparison - the affect, he supposed, that marketing intended.

It was not a particularly brumal December in Northwest Britain, but the estuary served as an invitation to the sort of wet chill that worked its way into one’s bones where it was then determined to camp for the winter. John André rubbed his clammy hands together to no relief as he waited on the lift to take him to his cubical in a shared office on the second storey, ten minutes after he ought to have clocked in. “Cold,” he commented to a dark-haired woman who joined him in the cabin with her cleaning trolley, making him move awkwardly to the side while she pressed the button to the first floor, slowing his commute enough that the minute that elapsed within these compact, mirrored walls made him anxious, suddenly unwilling to delay his arrival for reasons beyond his basic needs which had thus far only been seen to in the form of hitting snooze a time to many after staying at the corner pub until closing, hoping the cheap wine would make him forget the wind and rain that substituted snow and silver bells in the City of Liverpool where he had been unlucky enough to find himself stationed after failing to make it in London’s financial sector.

As it happened, André had a headache.

He was happy when the woman left with whatever she used to sanitise the toilets, of which he found he had a sudden, acute need as he began to imagine her as he had seen her on occasions prior - bent over a urinal with a spray bottle, the slightly-too tight low-rise jeans that standing gave her small belly more circumference than might have otherwise been spotted or suggested sliding down further as she scrubbed away at others’ waste, revealing an old thong that would not have been especially sexy if it existed for him outside of the office. He felt himself begin to grow stiff and wondered if this had more to do with the housekeeper and the ill-fitted clothes that likely reddened her alabaster skin in the places where the dark denim’s stretch was challenged by her working class diet or the fact that he had not had a proper piss before rushing out of the house; late, as per usual, his long hair as damp as the Merseyside air that would have given it waves regardless of his attempts to combat climate with the temporary application of warm air. Unable to decide, he pressed the button for the doors to reopen, rushed to the gents’ a floor below the one where he was already due to be on - answering the same series of questions regarding sales commissions that had been posed to him every payday Friday for the past six years, always by the same individuals who were intent on making him suffer their unexplainable and inacceptable innumeracy.

His hangover worsened with the mere thought of the screaming he was bound to endure as the rest of the wine he had indulged in the night prior to help him forget a setting slightly more pleasant left him to the day ahead. André shook himself dry, and, seeing that the housekeeper whom part of him hoped to impress was still busying herself in the ladies’ lavatory, he zipped up his trousers without again meeting the same shy smile she had offered to his one-word weather assessment, washed his hands and made his way upstairs.

This, he saw instantly, had been a mistake.

“Jesus, Mary, José!” a familiar voice greeted when André, a full fifteen minutes after contractually required to do so, opened the door to his office. “Ye owe me sixty quid, John,” the Scot announced proudly. “Ah am haur tae collect.”

Robert Rogers still had a bandage over his right eye from a cataract surgery whose recovery he had timed with bank holidays to remove him from the office for the remainder of the calendar (and fiscal) year. As such, André had no working concept of what his desk-mate was doing back in the office, the supposed (and more likely than not self-supposing) sixty quid aside. Raising his eyebrows in an exaggerated way he knew to raise the estimation of his age as the fine lines on his forehead deepened to compensate the skin that sought to fill them, he opened his mouth to hazard the question. When another co-worker provided an answer, he shook away the unflattering expression of mild shock, moved towards his desk, switched on his computer and deleted the messages that had accumulated over the course of the morning on his office phone without giving them a listen. If it was important, they would call again. They would call again even if it was not.

“Mourinho finally got the sack,” John Graves Simcoe chirped by way of greeting without looking up from his monitor. For this absence of etiquette, André found himself grateful. When they conversed, Simcoe’s stare tended to suggest the crosshairs of a highly precise rifleman ready to take aim regardless of tone or what was being said. André was happy not to meet it. “I’m due twenty pounds from your pocket myself, sperate bet,” the ginger informed him cheerfully. It sounded like a threat.

“I haven’t any idea over what it is you speak,” André answered in earnest.

“Och ay coorse ye dinnae, Johnny. Ye aye forgit yer auld mukker Robbie when speart tae boss yer pockets. Hewlett?” he glanced over at his compatriot who did not have a strong Scottish accent or, insofar as André knew, a Christian name.

“Ah, yes I can actually confirm this. Um, that you put sixty on ‘no’ back in August when I asked the office if José would be gone by Christmas and a separate twenty in an individual bet with Simcoe that he would leave before Pogba. I can send you the spreadsheet,” he offered, unhelpfully.

Though clearly the most over-qualified member of their department, Hewlett was, in essence, what the world of finance called FILTH – failed in London, tried Hong Kong – where, it seemed, the only thing he had succeeded in was learning to cook with oyster sauce. He had drug the distinct scent back with him to Britain some time before the advent of André employment and had since set up an illicit betting ring within the timeshare and holiday rental frim for whom they worked to supplement his salary. In some ways, Hewlett – Edward or Emmet or whatever it was that the mother he supposedly had in Edinburgh called him – was an absolute genius. He took a ten percent booking fee from a horde of young men with easy, disposable, sales-floor income; men whom, for the most part, had no professional qualifications beyond their good looks and charm and not enough cumulative experience to tell them that the statistics they traded at the watercooler and the pub down the street were not always the best barometer for how their side would perform at the weekend. Management either turned a blind eye to this activity, or, as André himself did, occasionally partook in this temptation.

André’s own spectrum of interests lied so far outside of those of his colleagues he never found ways of working them into conversation. On the few occasions he had tried to insert a bit of culture into the office, his attempts were met with deaf ears. André lived for ballet, for opera and orchestra, for classical literature and all of the other things put to him by his co-workers as over priced forms of pretention. He could not argue this point, nor could he stand another round of rejection from the people with whom he spent most of his waking hours. Of all of his turgid pastimes, theatre was the closest to his heart. André acted in an amateur ensemble in what for the past two years had seemed an open secret. After inviting everyone he knew to various plays and improvs and receiving no response, he had ceased promoting his projects in favour of fitting in with the common foot solider.

So far, such had cost him his pride and – were his running figures correct and if he in fact owed his office-mates £60, £20 and £8 respectively – a total of £142, 36.

John André had no idea who José Mourinho was, which club he was leaving, and these things, or so he gathered from the riotous cheer of the men who shared his hell, would at this point be as embarrassing to inquire into as Hewlett’s given name.

“How big is the spread sheet?” André asked, looking at one of his many unread e-mails from Human Resources, this one signalling the day as ‘causal’ Friday. He glanced around the room. Simcoe was dressed in an impeccable suit as always and Hewlett, with whom he had something of a running competition, met him at his level. Rogers looked the way he would whether he had read the email or not, like he had just gotten back from a camping excursion and had not yet had time for a shower and therefore also eliminated himself as a measure by which to judge. “What is the date?” André asked to be sure, recalling the woman with the hourglass figure and the jeans that did not quite accommodate it whom he had met in the lift before anyone gave him an answer. “Print all the data from this half-season,” he ordered. “Simcoe, get a list of list of garnished wages at the ready-”

“Ur we workin’?” Rogers wondered.

“No, my friend, check your email. It is casual Friday, we are just trying to clog up the printer.”

“You are repulsive,” Hewlett muttered as if he had any right. Before André could challenge this assertion, his phone rang. He sighed, recognising the number.

“Tarleton?” Hewlett guessed, the phrase ‘garnished wages’ still in his ears. “Transfer him to me, I actually have £190 pounds of untaxable income, well,” he paused, “£171 which he can come up and collect or reinvest. It should offset his ire.”

“It is Arnold,” André answered. Hewlett shook his head no, retook his seat, lifted his headset and dialled the pre-programmed number of an auto-insurance firm the office used to tie up their individual phone lines in an orchestrated act of avoidance.

“Anyone want Chinese food?” Simcoe asked, taking a cue from his favourite internal enemy.

Rogers raised his hand and signalled for Simcoe to stand guard. “Ah'll tak' yer bonnie sales rep, Johnny, sae lang as ye pay up an' buy us a roon at th' pub doon th' causey come lunch,” he offered with a degenerate laugh, all the while gesturing towards Simcoe with his single visible eye. André smiled at the suggestion, pressing a button that filled the ginger’s ear with the voice of a deeply dissatisfied American ex-pat who for all his years in the service of the sales floor could not be bothered with the understanding that a commission would not appear in one’s bank account until two weeks after processing was given confirmation that the customer had paid the amount in full.

André and Rogers overheard Arnold scream into Simcoe’s ear that he had bills to pay. “Aye, dornt we aw,” the Scot muttered. Hewlett gave them both a smile that seemed a grin given the relative size of his mouth to that of any other. He was listening to music on hold. “Handel,” he identified.

André, who did not have a car and would not have gotten through the automated phone tree to a live representative even if he had, dialled the same number to be sure. This, of course, only after reaching into his wallet and placating his colleagues with all of the cash he was carrying.

He still owed Simcoe twenty quid.

He still owed the office a round at noon.

It was almost worse than drinking alone.

 

* * *

 

A half hour later John André was roused by a high voice from the lull of a religious oratorio whose composer, he was annoyed, his classless co-worker had correctly identified. Mixed with the Heiko Maas / Viktor Orbán tag on a fanfiction site that might have generated more reader interest if it marketed itself as ‘fake news’, this ambiance felt a fitting of the hours he had yet to fill before the forty-eight or so in which he would be free to do much the same.

“Hewlett, you check your email?” Simcoe asked loudly, his conversation with Arnold evidently over.

“I don’t have anything from you.”

“No, from HR. I am headed down there now if you want to get a head start on this.”

“Same procedure as last year?” Hewlett smiled as he rose.

“Same procedure as every year, James!” Simcoe returned.

 _James_ , André thought. So that was his given name.

Hearing this exchange, Rogers stood and grabbed his coat of the back of his chair. “Och buck th' secrit Santa. Ah wasnae here,” he told them, raising his finger to his lips as though bidding the boys to keep quiet. André could tell from Simcoe’s slight grin that silence was more than Rogers had rendered himself in a position to ask for.

“Do you see what you did to me?” Simcoe asked, pointing to the mangled remains of his left ear as to imply that the conversation he had been fooled into having with everyone’s least-favourite commissioned sales representative had disfigured him in such fashion. (In reality, or so André gathered from the inter-office idiocy in which he did not prefer to partake, Simcoe had been in a row after a football match somewhere in the Northeast, the same incident in which he had been banned from further stadium attendance for punching a police horse in a moment of pain, anguish, or the same general state of enthusiastic aggravation in which the man seemed to dwell.) He waved Rogers farewell and turned to the door.

“Wait,” André said. “Both of you, send something ridiculously cumbersome to the printer before you leave to go bother the entire workforce with your damned reindeer games.”

“You’re not serious,” Hewlett frowned, his face a kaleidoscope of his failure to understand his own hypocrisy.

James Hewlett and John Graves Simcoe had a seasonal tradition which they held sacred between them – using the office ‘Secret Santa’ exchange (which had a ‘politically correct’ name as to not offend the Muslim members of the workforce, who, themselves, uniformly, referred to the unnecessary expenditure on their time and resources under Christian or, rather, dated colloquial terms, excusing André from caring about the specifics of nomenclature) to their own borderline-criminal ends. Each year, the two fought to exchange the names they pulled from a hat for one another’s, entitling them to fill the other’s desk with the sort of items that led André to believe they both had connections to some black market for this express purpose.

André avoided HR where he could but had to imagine that the things the two gifted each other each would have counted as fireable offences were complaints ever formalized. Hewlett and Simcoe, however, looked forward all year to the week of irritation and aggravated assault, whereas everyone else saw the office’s efforts towards holiday cheer as another holiday chore. Maybe their way was better.

Maybe they were all hypocrites when it came to workplace amusement and where one chose to seek it out.

The lads had five days a year in which to fully indulge their darker fantasises.

John André’s innermost desires were, comparatively, far simpler and easier gotten.

As such he got to indulge in them every fortnight, every casual Friday to be precise. There was a boy who worked in the IT department who had never quite outgrown his emo phase – that, or he had not purchased jeans since sixth form. Whenever the calendar afforded André the opportunity, he asked his co-workers to clog up the printer that ‘Booty’ Tallmadge (as he was colloquially known) would grace the room with his rear. Hewlett rolled his eyes. “Alright, I am going to do the spreadsheet on projected weekend match results – fifty-three pages,” he announced.

“Is that just from this week?” André asked, trying to calculate how much capitol the small Scot took in from his side-gig any given Friday.

“I’ve got the complete works of William Shakespeare,” Simcoe offered, returning to his own desk to pull something up from the internet. “Rogers,” he continued “While you’ve been gone, we stated a new game if you want in. André buys lunch for whomever has the document that defeats the printer by way of showing his gratitude.”

André had forgotten about this detail entirely.

“Ah cannae see a damn hin' oan mah screen, hauld oan,” Rogers grumbled before making more accusations of subsidies that he was owed. “Greater Merseyside phainbook,” he announced after what seemed a long deliberation.

André, pulling up his available account balance on his banking apt and deciding the expenditure was still worth it gave the go ahead.

“Alright men, at your mark, get set -”

 

* * *

 

Worth it, it was not.

Though to its credit Liverpool had the cheapest pint of any city of its size within the UK, the afternoon had set him back seventy quid – seventy quid John André could no longer use to drink the week away after tonight’s dress rehearsal under preferable company. Simcoe had been able to secure Hewlett’s name in a record series of exchanges, showing that the rest of the office had even less love for the little man, if what they shared could have been called that. Hewlett had been quite for his part, ordering the most expensive wine sold by-the-single-glass on the menu, twisting all seven pounds worth of it around without taking a sip as to create an air of clout. When Rogers began to do the same with his bourbon, André felt as though he was being mocked.  

The bartender knew him by name (as most did), something André excused as having given the man his credit card when such raised Simcoe’s suspicions – expressing his inner judgement by a sharp back jilt of his head that made his heavy jaw double upon itself. André had settled his twenty-quid debt to the man via a plate of fish and chips (not wanting to cross several city-blocks of wet chill to go to a cash machine that afternoon), causing Hewlett to accept his ten percent fee in the form of flour starch able to imitate the taste of potatoes through the combined forces of modern chemistry and the undiscerning English palate. André himself had had the same. It was quite lovely. Rogers, who had won the printer jamboree with his phonebook, had ordered a sandwich packed with every species of livestock man had ever though to domesticate as a food source.

At the establishment’s urinal after taking aim, John André closed his eyes, again imagining the untrained ass of the woman their company employed to clean the toilets with her headache inducing chlorine spray bottle, wider than it was round. He had been denied Tallmadge as the object of his perversion by Rogers’ delay; Mr Sackett - the older, eccentric head of the IT department stepping in to take the young man’s place.

“John,” someone said. He opened his eyes and found Hewlett beside him, engaged in the same act of relief though there were plenty of other less intrusive locations in this washroom in which he could well have chosen to take his piss.

“James,” he tried.

“It’s Edmund,” Hewlett corrected with another of his famous frowns. “Listen,” he adjusted, shifting his eyes downward in a way that transferred his audible discomfort to André who suddenly wished he had not had quite so much to drink that afternoon, the night before, at any point in his life between finding the key to his father’s liquor cabinet at fourteen and this that might currently be having such an effect on his bladder. “You are good with women. I need some advice.”

Both statements, André considered, were demonstrative of the limits of Hewlett’s consideration.

“Look up,” André answered in response to the man’s plea for advice. Finding his dark eyes as unsettling where he could see them as they had been when he was forced to imagine where they hid, he added with a hint of disgust, “Not at me. We’re in the lavatory, man.”

“Ah – I, I’m sorry,” Hewlett stuttered, fixed and focused on the wall before him.

“With women, I don’t think I can help you. Unless,” he considered, imagining asking Hewlett to come to the premier of his community theatre production next week, taking him out afterwards and finding among all the patrons of a crowded pub the girl most willing to exchange her dignity for a few drinks and recycled lines for Hewlett to try his luck with (as was his talent with the fairer sex insofar as André could claim one.) “My troupe usually goes out after our first show, I could make some introductions -”

“No,” Hewlett dismissed much to André’s chagrin though the answer was expected. “Ah, that is … I am not speaking of women as a general, but rather as a specific, there is this girl you see. I, that is, I drew her name, at random of course, when Simcoe and I went to Human Resources to pick lots for the Holiday Exchange -”

“Seriously?” André blinked. “Is that what Philomena and her team have decide to go with as politically correct nomenclature?”

“I – ah, why yes I believe -” Hewlett stammered. “It is more inclusive,” he offered, confused that he was being made to explain.

“No,” André shook his head, “I don’t mean to sound like one of the Americans we are made to share our workplace with, enraged about the liberal agenda taking ‘Christ’ out of Christmas, but Chanukah has just past and Ramadan is in the summer.” He did not like Philomena and her department for reasons that extended far past the name that had come to replace Santa in response to outside influence when she could have just as easily cancelled the annual event altogether, but this, he decided, hurrying to fold himself back into his trousers, was not the time or place for a heart to heart, however much _Edmund_ might well want it to be. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That has nothing to do with … do, please go on.”

“Her name is Anna, Anna Strong, from housekeeping. I’ve been in love with her since I had the pleasure of making her acquaintance.”

André considered that he had quite possibly considered wanking off to this woman twice that same morning listened with slightly heightened interest. “Did you meet her in the loo?” he inquired.

“No, on Tinder.”

“Hewlett!” André grinned. “I never thought you had it in you!”

“Well um, I don’t … actually, we, we met up and recognising one another from the office under less flattering light, ah, that is to say, without the benefit of a filter -”

“I find Scotch works the same wonders as Sepia.”

“Th-that well may be, but we both found it, that is, a bit awkward, to go to bed with someone we’d undoubtably see at work the next day and spent our date simply … getting to know one another,” he tried. “Of course, it is entirely platonic but, it has been a few months, you see, and I wish it was more. I’m thinking, I might use this … office event to show her that she means more to me than, well … that I for one think we could find a way to work around the fact that we more or less work together.”

“It is meant to be secret. The ‘Holiday Exchange’.”

“Well, until Friday,” Hewlett corrected. “I was thinking I could disguise – buy her gifts that she wouldn’t take as an advance unless she wanted to, to see if she wants to, you know -”

“The scientific method?” André smirked.

“Precisely.”

“No. Here is what you do. I imagine with all of your side earnings you have a halfway decent flat -”

“I have a detached house out in Woolton,” Hewlett said sheepishly.

“Are you kidding me?” André shook his head.

“Housing bubble,” Hewlett shrugged.

“Right, right. Any road, that covered, here is what you need to do. Make plans with Anna and cancel the day before – in person, polite, hesitant, saying that you just found out you have to watch _The Notebook_ as part of a requirement for some course you are taking for pleasure – filmography, feminism, whatever it is that you think will be met with the most wonder. She loves the film and will immediately, emphatically begin insisting that you will, too.”

“How do you know this?” Hewlett squinted.

“It is a woman we are discussing, no? She loves the movie,” André was able to dismiss. “She has it on DVD, trust me. Invite her back to your luxury residence to watch it with you. Order take out – sushi, as thanks for her brining it over. Have wine chilled but make sure that it is not the first beverage you offer her when she comes in. Regardless of how you usually take your raw fish, hold off on using any wasabi until the film nears its conclusion – the story is about a woman with Alzheimer’s whose husband tells her about how they two fell in love without her recognising herself as the female protagonist until the very end when the pair decides it would be rather romantic to die at the same time, at this very moment when she knows who she is and how much she loves him and somehow they mange to stop their hearts without the wine and Xanax that pedestrians like us resort to when making such pacts.”

“What do you mean to imply -”

“That the film is trash but you need to find a way to relate. She will be crying. She always does. Shed a tear or two and while the credits are rolling concoct the sort of story that passes you off as sensitive. The wasabi will help with the physical components of this act. Be sure to mention that you have never opened up about this to anyone before – which you’ll not have done, as it won’t be true. She will thank you for trusting her with her innermost and open herself a bit in some non-trivial way. Keep eye contact. Offer nothing but the pretence of your attention, squeezing her hand when such feels appropriate. Since she will have been drinking, surely, by this point, order an Uber – by no means are you to sleep with her or invite her to spend the night. Pay for the ride, it will make you look like a proper gentleman in the chivalrous sense woman are both want to denounce and demand.

“The next morning, drive her car back to her place and invite her out for breakfast. You’ll be dating before she has decided exactly what syrup she wants added to the steamed milk-espresso concoction she will name as coffee. It’s simple.”

“That is a right ill way to think,” Hewlett sneered.

“You think that is somehow more maladjusted than your plan of wooing a woman by putting five-pound trinkets in her push cart at Christmas and hoping she will say more than the obligatory ‘thank you’ when all is said and done?”

“You have never been in love, have you?” Hewlett accused, aghast.

André shook his head. “I’ve been in love with every man or woman whose bed I’ve ever shared. I just have the sense to leave before the morning light.”

 

* * *

 

This, however, was not expressly true as Hewlett and everyone in the office seemed to know.

When the four returned to the office, walking quickly through the sales floor with their heads down for fear that one of the commissioned sales representatives would have a basic question about their pay stub, Abigail at the reception desk seemed determined to make at least André’s own attempts at avoidance impossible.

“Mr André,” she called out to him. “You are wanted upstairs at HR.”

André nodded that he had heard her and took a moment to study Abigail’s stunning co-worker Peggy, who, for her part, was determined not to look in his direction. André frowned. The blonde, who only worked in the office in the afternoons (possibly as part of a work-experience scheme giving what André estimated her age to be) had refused his last three invitations to the monthly improv shows his troupe hosted, either having adapted the general office attitude towards the fine arts or having since heard of his year-long affair with an actress of slightly more acclaim. André assumed he would sleep with her someday although he knew better than to try his luck now.

When he turned to find his friends, he found that they had left him alone in the wilderness of young men who could read his signature on their cheque, but, somehow, could not read numbers and had the audacity to claim that his were wrong.

It took only seconds before a few of the lads began shouting fractions at him. It took longer than it should have for him to realise they were talking about sport. Relieved, he told them they knew Hewlett’s extension – Edmund or Emre or whatever it was that he was called when not wearing a three piece suit - and turned away, bidding the boys farewell with a by forming his fingers into a ‘V’, which, judging on accents he heard in the hall, he could reasonably assume that had interpreted as an olive branch or as an offensive gesture (as had been his intention.)

“What is it with all of these ugly Americans?” he asked his reflection when the lift at last opened.

John André, however, by his own admission looked just as awful as those he sought to critique. It had been raining for weeks and his skin had lost what little colour it naturally carried. Tanning towels, as he was beginning to find, filled only his fine lines as off late and as such he had sworn off of them. His eyes were blood-shot and directly below them, half-circles marred his face with their further admission of his lack of sleep. He wished that he had at least been having fun these long winter nights, but entertainment, no matter where or how one sought it, had no value when one had no company with which to share its pleasures. He drank too much, too often and it was beginning to show, not just on his skin but around his midsection – at least, it seemed that way in the shirt and suit he had been wearing since the day before.

This was not the way he wanted to look when he saw Philomena, his ex, the one person in this outpost with whom he had ever been able to share his heart and mind.

She was an _actress_. At least, this is what she had told herself at twenty when she was working waitressing gigs. She was an _actress_ when she started on the sales floor and for a few months, or so she had told him, after moving upstairs. In her mid-thirties she had finally achieved the acclaim she sought throughout her youth, landing the lead in productions of part-time players with practically every audition. But she was not an _actress_ any more, at least not until after five PM when she traded her high salary and high heels for period costume belonging to a part that was only part of her life.

André had longed to be her in any and every sense.

And then it was over.

He went back to his office, ran a few reports and listened to hold music as he worked away the afternoon. He would make Philomena wait until just before closing before giving her the satisfaction of delivering a reprimand.

 

* * *

 

This, he discovered, had been a mistake.

When he came to her office at 4:30 in the afternoon, Benedict Arnold was inside screaming over everything he gave this company in terms of bodily fluids. Sweat, blood and tears. André mentally filed in a few of his own, each more objectionable that the last, as he overheard Philomena explain in a corporate calm (that even with her acting skills betrayed her annoyance) that the four-hour training he had yet to complete was required of all new employees, a mandate that came from the state rather than from her office or the c-suite. “You can do it online over the weekend,” he heard her say. “You can do it on your lunch break or on your phone while sitting on the shitter – but you can’t continue working in the UK if I don’t get an email confirmation of your having done this training by the end of the year.”

Arnold startled him when he stormed out of the office. “This man can vouch for me,” he said in a strong baritone that matched his grip. André blinked, too stunned by the exchange had had unwillingly become a part of to move or to remove Arnold’s heavy hand from his shoulder. He looked up to meet the man’s gaze. Arnold seemed to look past him as he continued that payroll knew how much profit he brought into this company each week.

“It is a legal requirement,” Philomena shrugged. “You have two weeks to meet it. Now if you’ll excuse us, Mr André is late for our meeting and I refuse for this to reflect on my evening ahead. Come in, John,” she invited. “This won’t take long.”

“Is this about me backing up the printer every other Friday in hopes of seeing Tallmadge in those leggings he thinks of as trousers?” he asked upon closing the door.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Philomena shook her head. “No, John André. You’ve managed nearly a month without anyone filing a formal sexual harassment complaint against you. Congratulations,” she answered impatiently.

“Then why am I here?” André wondered, having come on no other possibility over the course of the afternoon.

“You have yet to pick,” she said, holding out a canvas tote-bag with the name of a discount grocer printed on it.

“What?”

“For the Holiday Exchange.”

“Dear God, will you just say ‘Secret Santa’?”

“No, because that is not what this is,” she insisted. Philomena Cheer was arousing when annoyed but in that moment John André could not for the life of him imagine what he ever saw in her.

“Is it optional then?”

“You know its not. There are like three names left, just pick one and go craw back into whatever wine bottle you dragged yourself out from under until Monday.”

“I’m in a play,” he told her.

“So am I,” she responded. “I didn’t realise your trope had found itself theatre space this season.”

They had not. André had been cast as an angle in a staging of the nativity. He had gotten the part as a perk of living next door to a church deacon, the same man who had invited him to play Jesus in a passion-play the previous spring. No one André had known had come to see that performance. The church had been full all the same. While he knew himself well enough to suspect the purely aesthetic attributes that allowed for the castings were not enough to open any such gate to eternity, it was as good of a chance as he could find of opening a door or two to the world of thespianism, one he found far more sacred than sacrament itself.

Philomena was playing Queen Eleanor in _The Lion in Winter_. Apparently, or so André had heard from some of the people he did improv with who had ties to the production, she was presently fucking one or all of the men playing her sons. “At least that is historically accurate,” he had replied coolly. He thought to ask her about it.

Instead, he read the name written on the lot he had drawn and asked if he could have another go.

 

* * *

 

John André had never felt further from the sense of merriment he had been told was meant to mark the holiday. The Santa-hats and stockings that adorned the cardboard cut-outs of the attractive women laying on foreign beaches under a sun that here had to be substituted with florescent lighting were even more offensive to his isolation and abandonment than they had seemed in the morning.

He had to buy a number of gifts for Benedict Arnold.

No.

He had to find some fool who was willing to let him trade his name for the one they had drawn.

The only person left in the building, however, was Peggy Shippen. To his surprise, she seemed to be waiting for him.

“John! John, hey!” she called, the pretty blonde curls that reached her lower back bouncing along with her cheerful voice and quickened pace. “Do you want to share my umbrella?” he offered, glancing at the grey skies that had opened into a downpour.

“No, no, Freddie is about to pick me up with the car,” she answered. “We are going shopping. I just had a question … if you have time.” She twisted the end of a lock of hair around her index finger as she spoke, indicating to André that her coquettish act was cultivated and highly intentional. He did not know who Freddie was, but he saw the whole of his relationship with Miss Shippen as it was sure to play out. He would invite her to watch _The Notebook_ with him and she would see right through the act. They two would spend the weekend entangled in each other’s arms, debating philosophy and literature. They would occupy one another entirely until things invariably fell apart and he found himself alone and at a new low where she would say to her gaggle of girlfriends that she had grown from the experience of dating an ‘older’ man, for that is how she would put it, thinking herself to sound worldly, thinking the description of him diplomatic. He heard her say all of this now as she spoke, realising when it was almost too late to for the act to go unnoticed that he had not been listening.

“So, I was thinking of going to LUSH,” Peggy babbled. “Do you know what kind of scents he would be into?”

By ‘he’, André quickly pieced together, Peggy was referring to John Graves Simcoe, a man she only knew of as ‘working in payroll’, who, in his Facebook profile picture was wearing what a girl who had no experience with mud beyond its exfoliating values mistook for a pore cleansing mask. In truth, the picture had been taken at a weekend excursion of the paintball kind, which Simcoe had described as “beautiful” and Hewlett as “brutal.” André had never gone through the motions of looking for anyone he worked with on social media, but found himself amused at the image Peggy had arrived on of this sensitive, poetic soul who enjoyed long baths, scented candles and reading poetry from the Roman Republic. André wonder how much of this was projection, picturing Peggy naked in a tub, rubbing invitingly at her nipples while she began to recite hendecasyllabic pleas for a thousand kisses and a hundred more.

He considered correcting her misconceptions of Simcoe by way of enticing her to make a trade. However, with the thought that forcing Arnold upon her would only be a hinderance to the sex he had convinced himself they two would soon be having, André was forced to content himself to the confusion that would soon ensure.

He let Peggy believe that the man who sat to his left enjoyed a fair bit of pampering; knowing that Simcoe, for his part, remained ignorant to the fact that Hewlett had not sought about the office for his name.

“So who did you get?” Peggy asked.

“Benedict Arnold,” André said through clenched teeth before forcing his lips upward into a smile the girl recognised instantly for its ironic intention. “I have no idea what to get him,” he said.

“I think what men like Arnold want one simply can’t purchase without seeming extravagant – respect, regard, esteem,” she offered wittily. “Better you than me though. I think he fancies me, to be honest,” she laughed as though the very idea were the best joke she had been told in some time. “I’d never give myself to a man like that.”

“A man like what?” André inquired, hoping his self-interest was not entirely transparent.

“Why, a buffoon!”

With that she bid him adieu, seeing her ride parked in the fire-lane. André stood where he was and watched her leave. Her laughter left an echo in the hall that made him feel hallow.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t until he got to the pub after the evening’s rehearsal that he first came on the idea.

Twisting the house wine which he knew to be from a box around in his glass to open its flavour for what it was, he thought of Hewlett doing the same in the afternoon. Considering that he was in fact as pretentious as a white-collar criminal who knew himself to be above prosecution, he took a sip and thought carefully about what the man had told him that afternoon. Hewlett was socially awkward, but he was not a fool. His plan with the dark-haired water-vixen who contented herself to public toilets might well work out for him.

And if Hewlett could pull it off, André was certain he could as well.

He pulled Peggy’s Twitter account up on his phone, twisted at the end of his own long, blonde hair and imitated the girl’s cutting giggles as he imagined how easy it would be to create the illusion that she thought of Arnold with the same regard in which he held her.

For the first time in memory, John André could not wait for Monday morning to arrive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *This is a love story, I promise.*  
> I do have notes, but first, if you haven’t seen it, I want to show you my favourite TV-spot:  
> [ God made the peanut, but He forgot the chocolate.](https://vimeo.com/289225082)
> 
> I don’t know why I find this so funny. I just can’t –
> 
> Sport:
> 
> I spent a too-large portion of the summer wondering what daily Google search would get me out of bed each morning after Arsène Wenger stepped down at Arsenal – somehow forgetting what a basket case **José Mourinho** is and what a joy his perpetual downward spiral is to behold. No, I don’t really think he will be gone by Christmas, but will happen, and when it does … Oh my God, I am just so giddy for this press conference. 
> 
> I’m sure that in my two and a half years on this site I have found some irrelevant reason to link you up to the lightly referenced **[Newcastle Fan v. Police Horse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SHuGha_bTo)** before, but here it is again in case you’ve missed it.
> 
> Politic:
> 
>  **Heiko Maas** (SPD) is the German Minister of Foreign Affairs and the reason we have the Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz – a reduction of free-speech on the internet, of which Herr Maas himself became a victim this summer, forced to delete a Tweet in which he called a political opponent an idiot.  
>  **Viktor Orbán** is the Prime Minister of Hungary and the leader of the national conservative Fidesz party. Both have been in the news recently with relation to refugees, insofar as I know no one has taken it upon themselves to write slash-fic of the sort André was reading, but I mean, it isn’t as though I’ve been looking.
> 
> Geography:
> 
>  **Woolton** is a posh suburb of what seems to be my favourite setting. So why does this story take place in **Liverpool** (aside from the charming winter-weather)? Because, in all honesty, the only city in the whole wide world that I have more love for is Hamburg (and that would make even less sense.)
> 
> Theatre/Film:
> 
>  **“Same procedure as every year, James!”** is of course a reference to **Dinner for One** the most frequently repeated TV programme ever. Though a New Year’s Eve Tradition in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Faroe Islands, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, South Africa and Australia, in its native England it is virtually unknown. André gets a pass here.
> 
>  **The Notebook** is exactly what it is described as being in the text. Well, not exactly. I’ve never seen it the whole way though. My Sunday-league side, however …
> 
>  **The Lion in Winter** is a play about break-up sex set in Henry II’s Christmas court. The 1968 film (that consequently has been played on television every year since) stars Peter O’Toole, Kathrine Hepburn and Anthony Hopkins.
> 
> Thanks so much as always for reading!
> 
> Up Next: The anthrax incident


	2. Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two self-centred men go about life as though the world has wronged them, alternating between putting far too little effort into exploring alternatives and far, FAR too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real talk – I might not get enough credit for my aspirations towards the historical fiction genre. Sure, I don’t set much in the eighteenth century, but a great deal of what I do pen takes place in 2016 which requires more work than one might realise. I have always gone at it with the idea (as I am sure most writers do) that time is as important to character or even plot in terms of the underlying thesis, believing whole heartedly that works with a modern timeline ought to use it to more of an advantage than simply allowing historical figures the convenience of mobile phones. In the one thing I am actually proud of writing, this takes the form of a heavy dependence on topical political and trade themes as told by a diverse cast, all while keeping largely to the ideas the historical figures they are based on expressed in their era in order to add weight to the underlining critique of how much of advancement is an illusion, and that our natural prejudices as spurned by the societies in which we were raised blind us to this reality we would do so well to finally overcome - 
> 
> HERE, however … oh my God you guys, I have to get even more needlessly preachy and pretentious because sometimes something BIG comes along in the news cycle that demands it be _immediately addressed._ Case in point - towards the end of last week I learned that Cirque du Soleil is developing a show based on the life of footballer Leo Messi - and I. just.
> 
> Yeah. 
> 
> There is a bloody high-minded moral somewhere in that single item warranting a mention in passing. So here is a Christmas-y fic in October. Sometimes it is better to look ahead a few months, you know, like speculators and supermarkets do. Enjoy!

John André appreciated the appropriate level of enthusiasm displayed on his desk in the form of a bag of crisps. Attached was a Post-It taken from his own pad that simply read “X-mas” (lest he interpret the intrusion into his workspace as lunch, leftovers, or a comment on his lifestyle.) He liked his gift-giver instantly for their assumed lack of seasonal cheer, hoping to himself that the Director of Human Resources had also received the old vending-machine’s finest for all of her needless incorporation of the winter holiday (without such boldness as to call it by its name) into an already stressful working-week. Feeling strongly, however, that carbs ought only to be consumed in tap-form and that he had more of his fair share of such sinful pleasures at the weekend, he opened the floor to trade.

This, he realised instantly, had been a mistake.

“What is th’ street value ay anthrax?” Rogers injected before Simcoe had time to consider the offer. Rogers, too, had received something almost as banal as the potato-substitute flavoured to taste like a Sunday Roast that André was currently hoping to entice Simcoe with by holding the bag over the divide for display. The Scot’s Santa, however, had lost a goodly measure of André’s esteem by bedazzling the Wunderbaum Air Freshener with the sort of heavy, sparkling stickers worn by school-aged girls whose mothers were hesitant to let them pierce their ears. Whether he understood that the small craft was meant to represent of Christmas Tree or not, the man delighted in the present, so much so that he seemed more willing to offer his countryman cash than to part with his prize. This caused André to fear that the air freshener would continue to serve the purpose of allowing Rogers to chastise the three other members of his team for letting the corner ficus (which had more tenure than any of them) die during his approved medical absence, stating with some warranted accusation that there were no trees left in Liverpool as he waved the scented carboard about.

This, too, had ought to be prevented if possible. “Any takers,” André tried anew, now directing to offer to the Scotsman who ought to have been home healing his eye until the new year. Rogers acknowledged him but gave no response.

“Cost me forty quid,” came the ginger’s answer on the powder he had supplied to his semi-assigned (though mostly sought) target.

Rogers grumbled in return, or perhaps he spoke, either way the sound omitted was incoherent and if André did not know the man he would have no cause to interpret it as consideration.

The morning itself had started with a scream – specifically, that of Rogers’ compatriot (whose name, André was beginning to consider, he would need to write down the next time he heard it spoken.) Unlike his own Secret Santa who had left a helpful label on a gift he had likely purchased in panic, (having presumably forgotten the awful office tradition in its entirety as one ought), the smaller Scot had come to work to discover a small bag containing a pinch of white powder standing proudly on his keyboard. Without any letter of intent, he concluded that it was cocaine.

 _‘Drugs?’_ he had demanded with the sort of drama that veered towards parody, his strange face twisting in ways painful to witness as he continued to his desk mate as though he meant to have the man court martialled, _‘John you have truly gone too far -_ ’ he began in a tone that caused all the room’s air to feel heavy.

‘ _It is anthrax_ ,’ Simcoe smiled, speaking with enough pep in his already disconcertingly high-pitched voice as to indicate that any illegal simulants he might have otherwise had on hand had been consumed along with copious amounts of espresso and Red Bull which would surely have the effect of keeping Simcoe awake and alert whilst making the days of everyone who hazarded into his company far longer than they needed to be. Hearing the substance named, the man fled his workspace in what would have seemed an act of self-preservation had he not remained in the shared office, in the corner where the grave of the dehydrated ficus was marked by its remains. _‘What is this?’_ Simcoe asked casually of his own gift, a peel off face mask with an antioxidant effect.

 _‘I’ve no idea. We’ve been over this. I didn’t buy it for you,’_ the man told him bluntly, still standing with his back against the wall half an hour hence.

Simcoe had seemed perplexed, both at the contents of the package and the concept that what he had accepted as a mutual understanding was in fact one-sided. He likely thought that his cherished rival had put as much effort into the sprit of giving as he himself had and that he was just having a go at him to a purpose he had yet to appreciate. _‘Don’t think I’m not on to you,’_ he said. If the sentiment was warm or instead meant in warning was impossible for one to deduce.

“Trade?” André asked once more, not wanting to hear much more of any of it. “I have the play coming up, I am trying to watch my figure.”

As it usually happened when he attempted to intrigue his colleagues with his casual thespianism, John André was altogether ignored.

Rogers continued to grumble as he reached for his wallet. “I'll gie ye twintie fife fur it, Hew,” he offered.

Discreetly as possible, André produced a pen from his drawer and scribbled the name below the sing-word wish of season’s greetings, satisfied with this discovery. He then drew a small arrow above the name and stuck it to the bottom corner of his monitor where it might serve as a reminder until he could commit as much to memory.

He looked like a Hugh, André thought. Perhaps it would serve him to compose a few lines of dialogue and rehearse them at home as he did for a play. As soon as this thought occurred to him, however, André disregarded it. That felt too much like bringing the office home with him in ways far less fun than preparing to prank Benedict Arnold had proven to be. When, he wondered, would he have cause to speak to this man after five in the evening? Hugh had no culture and no appreciation for those who did; to that end, André wondered, why had he bothered learning the names of anyone he knew from work?

For a moment, he imagined an alternative to his reality, one in which he reduced each man to a single name scribbled on a Post-It along with notes that had long since served their purpose, all of which would go forgotten with the day’s end. He smiled at the word ‘X-mas’, imagining the man or woman who had taken the time to write it having no time whatsoever for idiosyncratic acts of those with whom one was forced by economic demands to associate with during certain hours, elevating the individual to an ideal as he continued to consider how much more pleasant life in its whole might prove if occupied only with individual interests. Art. Music. Literature. Theatre – though, he noted, this was likely more of a hopeful projection than anything else. His Santa was, statistically speaking, likely to be one of the many self-satisfied fucks from the sales floor substituting whatever allegiance they held to a local sport franchise for personality.

They were probably just lazy and inconsiderate in addition to their countless other flaws.

Still, it seemed a preferable alternative to the company he currently kept.

“Fine just, take it – just you, take if off my desk, _please_ ,” Hugh eventually accepted after what ought not to have amounted to quite as much internal debate. André could not tell if he was more annoyed at the apparently under-market value he was offered, or, that without a biological agent preventing him from doing so, he would have to sit down and look at spreadsheets like the rest of them. Rogers, for all of his complaining, seemed content with the trade.

For a moment a workplace-silence settled - the unrhythmic orchestra of typing, the buzz of the unflattering florescent lights, the commotion of people passing in the hall. It was unsettling due to the conversation that had proceeded it; a conversation André was curious enough to continue when it seemed both men whom he reasoned ought to have equal reason to react were not going to respond in kind.

“Alright, I’ll be the one to ask – Robert, what do you mean to do with the anthrax?”

“I’ll brin' it doon tae th' sales fluir come time fur mah fag break. Thes, by th' way, coonts as mah Christmas gift tae ye lot.”

“In what way?” Hugh frowned, perhaps expecting something more against any evidence of past behaviour.

Rogers left out a long sigh. “Got intae th' office the-day in faily guid spirts only tae hear puckle ay th' lads downstairs talkin' abit th' SPL in general an' th' Auld Firm in spicific in ways Ah felt a total misrepresentation,” he gave. “Aam gonnae pit thes haur poke whaur it is sure tae be foond. If th' supervisur gits thaur first, they will become HR's problem. If th' lads fin' it they will likely mistake it fur drugs - either way th' situation sorts itself.”

“Oh, that is brilliant,” Simcoe said under his breath.

André blinked several times in succession.

Hugh shook his head but seemed to give his approval, “What none of them understand is that were their clubs held to the same criteria as we have north of the wall, not only would they be in relegation but they would never return to the top flight.”

“Aye,” Rogers agreed. “But thaur is a consensus 'at since Rogers can hae a grain auld time ay it with th’ Bhoys anyain coods gang up an' win th' league.”

“What?” André asked, legitimately failing to comprehend what had just been spoken.

“It is coincidence,” Simcoe explained condescendingly. “Brendan Rogers who failed so miserably at Liverpool has more than found his footing at a club our own Rogers can’t well stand. You are Rangers then, right?”

Rogers shook his head but offered nothing further. After some time he rose, placing his black-market purchase in his back pocket.

“Is no one going to make the moral argument?” André spat.

Hugh and Simcoe both shrugged their shared disinterest of the fates of their colleagues downstairs, having since elected against every strategy of self-preservation to stay with the subject that André gleaned from what little he could follow had annoyed Rogers in the first place – Anglo-Irish former footballers who had wound up in Scotland after stints in the city he currently lived in but refused to associate as his home. Apparently, most everyone on the sales floor was either local, Scottish or Irish and had some personal stake in this topic, which was curious if not all together uninteresting from a cultural standpoint.

“So … you are from Glasgow then?” André again, tried to engage the men, this time on their own terms.

“Edinburgh,” Hugh corrected.  

“Rogers?”

“Me? Aam frae Massachusetts.”

“What?” André responded sharply, now certain he had misheard.

“New Englain? United States? Shoods Ah gie a map fur ye?” Rogers asked in large, insulting and slightly intimidating gestures.

“With that accent?” André squinted.

“Th' buck ye hink 'at fowk frae Massachusetts soond loch?”

Suddenly, John André realised he had no idea. “Your whole persona though would seem to suggest,” he began vaguely. “And the fact that you are willing to see a few boys killed or made redundant based on the variety of contradicting personal prejudices that affect their approach and appreciation for -”

“Whit ur ye oan abit? Ah jist dornt loch fitba, Aam dain ay them aye jammerin' abit it in th' wee small hoors.” he shrugged. “Aam aff.”

“You are Scottish. Americans say soccer not ‘fitba’,” André frowned, so perturbed by the falsity of Rogers’ claims that he had all but forgotten the act of terror in which he left the room to engage.

“Well, let it snow then,” Hugh quipped.

“It is powdered sugar,” Simcoe snickered after Rogers had slammed the door behind him. “Eliza and the kids were baking at the weekend and I took the opportunity before it could be turned into icing.”

André blinked, suddenly desperately seeking his characterization of the enormous ginger as a beast barely contained, the sort of man willing to murder a co-worker with a biological weapon on an otherwise bland Monday morning. He stood up, actively seeking Hugh’s awful face, hoping to find surprise or relief to match his own.

“I bet Cornwallis will find it first and just toss it out rather than deal with the administrative measures involved in discipline,” Hugh fought the urge to smile, making André wonder if the two had orchestrated this prank together, something Hugh all but confirmed with his follow up, “I’ve an unexpected twenty-five pounds from this though, want to call in Chinese for lunch?”

 

* * *

 

Benedict Arnold had not given he holiday much thought until a missive recalled another.

_‘I worry this may seem altogether too-soon, but seeing as Christmas is still a week away and stores are already shifting consumer culture towards Valentine’s Day, I see little reason not to incorporate a bit of romance into our week of “unnamed winter holiday” festivities. XOXO – your “secret” Santa.’_

He stared at the elegant script on the rose-coloured stationary, each dot replaced with a cheeky heart, feeling his pulse quickened by an implication not specifically stated but implicit all the same –

He had forgotten to buy John André a gift.

For a moment, Arnold played with the idea of placing the fine Swiss pralines on the desk of the man whose unlucky name he had drawn. He had even carried them to the lift with an intent to do so until after a minute of waiting for its decent, the doors opened to reveal the girl who never failed to rob him of his breath.

“Lucky you,” Peggy Shippen winked as the heart-shaped box he held as she passed him, he pace slightly slower than that to which he had become accustom, women often looking to pass him by as quickly and with as few words as possible.

“Lucky you,” Arnold repeated to himself when returned to seclusion after the elevator doors had closed, unable as he had been to come upon a clever response to the small flirtation. Instead he repeated the statement he had been afforded all throughout his ascend until it seemed a question: How had Peggy known the chocolates had been a gift? Why had she not instead assumed it something he had picked out for another?

He pulled the letter that had accompanied the package, finding it sounded so natural in her voice, one that sounded as though it were as speckled with small hearts as the handwriting from which he read.

In that moment, Benedict Arnold was certain that Peggy Shippen was his admirer, that noting was secret as her quotations implied, that he had merely been blind to her advances. How badly he felt! Had she rushed by him before to conceal the colour he brought to her already rosy cheeks? Had every light insult by which she answered his greetings instead been attempts at witticisms meant to impress him? How he must have offended her by shrugging off as slights these words of affection Peggy had on constant offer.

It could not continue. Of this he was certain.

He could not leave the Lindt with John André, badly as he felt that in his attempt to satisfy another of immigration’s apparent demands he had forgotten to secure a gift for the holiday exchange.

Luckily, the building’s layout left him with multiple options of averting this faux pas – thirty to be exact.

Arnold took a survey of the vending machine snack options, and, knowing nothing about André beyond that he was the blonde on the overly pretentions payroll team elected what looked to be the most popular item – a bag of beef-flavoured potato chips with but one example left for purchase. Grumbling to himself at the two-pound price purely on principle (the supermarket closest to his house sold such packages for fifty pence) he pressed the keys 1 and A to dispense, fighting the machine with the full of his weight when it refused to immediately do his bidding. Despite the slight delay, the payroll office was still empty when he entered, giving him time and task.

Determining to whom each desk belonged was not difficult. Simcoe’s was adorned with the ‘art’ of his many children and the wife reportedly rich enough to stay at home with them pursuing this same pastime. A travel-sized “Battleship” board found its lace below his monitor, its twin could be found on Hewlett’s desk, itself having otherwise little to distinguish it beyond a meticulously organized staked layer tray and three postcards pinned to the grey mesh of his cubical with exacting precession – ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’, The word ‘Perseverance’ boldened below a picture of a galloping horse and a definition Arnold took without reading to either be ironic or inspirational, and an emblem with the words ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ – which he could assume based on the source of the man’s rumoured side-earnings had nothing to do with and old Rodgers and Hammerstein musical of which Arnold was reluctantly fond.

Rogers took a minimalist approach to his workspace, marking it as his own only with a half-consumed bottle of IRN-BRU and a city parking ticket tacked to a date in January on his three-month calendar as though to serve as a reminder to put in for leave in order to argue the fee.

The man who sat opposite him was as lavish as Rogers was lacking.

John André’s desk displayed a small library – the sorts of books one expected to find in a corporate environment, Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Machiavelli’s Prince and Trump’s Art of the Deal, as well as an anthology of English poetry and the Works of William Shakespeare.

Suspecting, Arnold took the last and largest volume in this line and opened it, thinking he would find a hidden flask, disappointed until making his way to his President’s contribution to this odd bookshelf, smiling to himself that of the five books Trump’s was sure to prove the least interesting to André’s team. John André may have been a rascal of some renown, but he was brilliant in his way. Before he could open the flask to determine the pretty-boy’s choice poison, approaching footsteps stopped him from engaging in this simple act of espionage. He took André’s pad and scribbled the word ‘X-mas’, sticking the pink Post-It to the chap bag as best he could, frowning when it refused to fully stay.

Robert Rogers took little notice of him when he entered, mumbling something incoherent to and perhaps about himself.

“Who is Brendan?” Arnold could not help but wonder aloud.

 

* * *

 

Throughout the day, Benedict Arnold spent most of his downtime reading and reading again the pretty words of Miss Peggy Shippen from reception. When she came in for her afternoon shift, he offered her a chocolate truffle of her choosing. Peggy smiled as she carefully examined the underside of the box, reading each decrepitation before making her selection – a white chocolate bauble with strawberry cream filling. Arnold watched her, imagining that she had been as careful and cautious in making her intentions towards him known. With a final smile at his “secret” Santa, he returned to his work area, retrieving the morning’s missive for his mobile phone, doing a Google search to see if the fruit his beloved seemed to favour could be secured out of season and dipped in chocolate as pale as her skin and sweet as her lips. Perhaps it was all too-soon as she herself had suggested, but had Peggy not wished for a bit of romance in this week of forced festivity?

Suddenly, the gesture seemed altogether too small.

 _“Why, pray tell, would you elect to see it a full month after the rest of us have gone?”_ Hanger inquired of another colleague. Arnold glanced around, catching yet another glimpse of a work-event from which he too was being excluded. _“Tactical precession,”_ Tarleton countered, _“waiting until February absolves me of exerting any extra effort towards Valentine’s Day.” “The question really is what causes you to think Mary will fall for your original trap of buying tickets to a French-Canadian circus staged around the life of Lionel Messi as a Christmas present purchased with her in mind,”_ Ferguson smarted. _“It would seem my intentions are mistaken,”_ Tarleton laughed, _“pretending my lady knows who Messi is, I will sell it as a weekend in London – theatre, which she loves, followed up with a hotel-room re-enactment of the more enticing acrobatic acts.” “Oh – take me I’m yours!”_

While the group laughed, Arnold, amended the strategy to his own romantic conquests. He logged in on a work computer and began searching for a romantic getaway, finding after a few minutes a cabin in a remote, snow covered countryside, catering itself to couples with images of a roaring fire in a cosy nook, a whirlpool tub for two and a canopy bed with decadent comforters under which a pair could be lost for days on end.

He would spend Christmas here in the best of company.

With Peggy Shippen, who would tease about ‘too soon’.

 

* * *

 

Invigorated by the love he had been promised, Benedict Arnold picked up a few small bottles of liquor at a petrol station on his way home from work, the one thing he found truly charming about life in the UK both in size and convenience. He even went so far as to collect them in a Ziplock bag, which he also labelled ‘X-mas’ so that there be no confusion. His gift was considerate. Tailored. So much so that John André might well have bought it for himself. Proudly with the purchase in hand, Arnold went to work early the next day and found the beautiful Peggy Shippen to his delight –

though as he observed he placing a bath bomb on another man’s desk, his heart fell.

“Peggy,” he greeted, “what are you doing here?” It sounded almost as though he were about to give an order.

“Why spreading a bit of Christmas spirit,” she giggled as girls tended to, causing Arnold to again see the hearts in her script.

“How widely do you spread this … Christmas spirit exactly?” he asked disapprovingly. Peggy frowned and diplomatically excused herself from the conversation, saying that she had morning classes or something of the kind.

Arnold took a bottle of Vodka from the collection he had gathered for his recipient, reasoning that it was still a decent gift as a set of five rather than six. When he returned to his own workstation, a teddy bear awaited him. Again, it promised him all that had thus far evaded him in life - the attention and affection that had always been absent.

Arnold’s father had been an alcoholic. When his mother left, she had not taken him or his siblings with her. When Child Protective Services later came to collect them after a call from a concerned teacher, young Benedict was made to part ways with his brothers and sisters too. For a while he lived in foster care, then, briefly, with an older cousin before the State again found the situation unsuitable and intervened ‘on his behalf’.

Benedict Arnold could well have gone to university on a sport scholarship had he not moved around and changed schools as much as he had been made to growing up, at least, that is what he told himself when he applied to community college.

After obtaining an associate’s degree in business, Arnold took a job in a real estate office, planning to save until he could further his education without going into debt – for that, he had a marriage and a mortgage, and these things fell apart all at once when the housing bubble had burst.

For a short time, Arnold had lived alone in a flat in Hartford, finding work at a mall kiosk that sold holidays abroad, or, more accurately, sold passers-by on foreign beaches with white sand which they likely later booked online for less if they in fact thought about it as they promised to when they walked on to the next entrapment – manicure treatments from the Dead Sea or acne medication ‘As Seen on TV’. When the owner eventually abandoned the stand and all of his debts to whatever nation in the developing world from which he had come, Arnold, too, thought that this sounded favourable than spending his life working far below his self-assessed, yet-untested earning potential in a city that had repeatedly upset his youth and had awarded his wife house and hound in their recent divorce proceedings.

Benedict Arnold was bitter when he got on the plane to Britain, a feeling that only grew with every ridiculous intrusion on the freedoms he had not appreciated until they had become lost to him in crossing the Atlantic. Here, he had to pay a tax on television where the only watchable programme was reruns of NCIS episodes he had already seen in the States months before. Weekly, he discovered new demands on his person or paperwork that felt equally outrageous. He felt as empty as the vodka bottle he had finished in the lift as he looked at the little bear who told him everything he wanted to hear in a voice he could no longer place. If Peggy had no given it to him, who had? Had he offended another in seeking her hand? Arnold resolved to spend his downtime in the interest of discovering who his admirer might be.

He had, after all, booked a cabin with a roaring fire and a bear-skin rug before it that begged to be shared.

He spoke to nearly every woman in the office that day, but the first who seemed to want to speak to him was Philomena Cheer, requesting his presence first thing the following morning.

The Director of Human Resources was anything but amused by his more recent behaviour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Story time! So I am always really vague on details when speaking about my time in Liverpool where … we will just call it a condition of my employment involved the (nominal) support of a certain club side. Naturally everyone assumes I mean either Everton or Liverpool until months … years … go by and I’m having myself a hardy laugh over a lacklustre performance- and then it is always “I thought you were a/an [X] fan.” NOPE! In truth I had to wear Green on game days all up in support of **Celtic Glasgow** , which is why I’ll throw in a reference to **The Bhoys** (as they are referred to here) when it fits the text.
> 
> Also mentioned, Northern Irish football trainer **Brendan Rogers** who is currently at Celtic, and coached **Liverpool** from 2012 until October 2015 when he was sacked after a one-all draw with local rivals Everton. Harsh.
> 
> Robert Rogers, contrary to what the series may otherwise suggest, was born 7. November (1731) in **Methuen, Massachusetts.** I have never been. Maybe the accent is on point and we are all just as fool as André for our assumptions regarding the TURN character’s nation of origin. **IRN-BRU** is a Scottish soda (but we best keep that to ourselves.)
> 
> Composer Richard **Rodgers and** lyricist-dramatist Oscar **Hammerstein** were a successful musical theatre writing team during Broadway’s golden age in the 1940s and 50s. Among their successes were Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The King and I, The Sound of Music, and **Carousel** , which is mentioned in this chapter.
> 
>  **#MessiCirque** is real and will start touring in 2019. At time of press I have no additional information to share, but [ I can imagine the show looking a whole lot like this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpEHEMsqwEU) (0:00-1:50)
> 
> Up next: André and Arnold attend workplace sensitivity training. Then … they go out for drinks.


	3. Spirit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A snide comment captures André’s imagination during a particularly miserable Workplace Sensitivity Seminar, causing him to later ask the man whose criticisms echo his own out for a drink that turns into a proper session which leads him to revaluate his choice methods of spreading holiday cheer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween! Here is some more Christmas fluff. I guess it is better than giving out Capri-Sun or boxed raisins.
> 
> Oh. There is some mild sexual action as the chapter nears its close. Be warned.

 

John André had never been more incensed than he was watching this scene unfold before him. At nine thirty on a Wednesday morning, otherwise remarkable only in that rain had yet to begin pouring from the grey mass obstructing the heavens that seemed synonymous with Merseyside itself, he sat in the front row of a weekly Workplace Sensitivity Training Seminar, perplexed as the passive player and disheartened as the Director (of Human Resources), though presumably for different reasons altogether.

“Of course he has a knife. He always has a knife. We all have knives. It’s 1183 and we’re barbarians. How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war,” Francis Rawdon exclaimed with theatrical flair that leaned towards parody. Philomena Cheer rubbed at her temples, obscuring her face as she allowed the monologue to continue. “Not history’s forces nor the times nor justice nor the lack of it nor causes nor religions nor ideas nor kinds of government nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it, like syphilis, inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can’t we love one another just a little? That’s how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.”

When he had finished, a few confused claps came from the audience. André’s hands, tightened into fists, did not join in this show of appreciation.

“That … is not at all w’appened?” Banastre Tarleton seemed to question, breaking character in a scene in which he was only meant to portray himself at that which the fully ignorant department head named as his worst. Tarleton remained blank-faced, looking to be lost in some considered thought that would doubtlessly prove empty once it reached his lips. He did not hear Rawdon’s response to this possible criticism.

John André, attentively listening, had a mind to ask the boy to repeat it.

“It wus an 'ommage ter Mammy,” Rawdon laughed, dropping his aggrieved-woman act in favour of a hideous accent that likely did him more than a few favours on a night on the town. Women, André assessed against this assumption, were too easy to please. So too, it would seem, were the directors of community theatre productions; by ‘Mammy’, Rawdon clearly meant Queen Eleanor as portrayed by Philomena Cheer in the upcoming community theatre production of The Lion in Winter.

Nothing about her posture seemed to contradict this presumption.

“You … have seen a preview then?” André asked, almost hopefully, forming a smile as best he could whilst speaking through clenched teeth. It was all he could do to keep from screaming.

“Oi'm in de show, mate,” Rawdon shrugged. “Oi nu al' me lines an' 'ers.” Philomena smiled, if only lightly. It was more than André could stand. “How?” he demanded, rising to meet the man. “Burgoyne cast _you_ whereas I can’t even get an audition? I’m a proper actor, I -”

“Sit down John,” Philomena sighed. “You’ll have your turn to complete this portion of the training.” Her C-Suite act shared too much with Rawdon’s rendition of the wife of two kings, mother of three. None of them understood the nuance of character.

“Come on, Mena, he doesn’t even understand improv!” André explained with half a mind to simply walk out. A few chuckles broke out between the men behind him, his fellow victims of those co-workers who could not stand to be extended a compliment in the current cultural climate. Rawdon, he knew from the previous act (in which neither player had proven convincing) was being punished for a kindly comment on a woman’s blouse. Office conversation told Arnold had made the mistake of calling a goodly number of the female staff members beautiful the day before. Hugh X-mas, whose given name André had spent enough time staring at to have committed to memory and whose surname had come as a gift alongside a bag of crisps, was the victim of a particularly well executed if not entirely well thought out prank. Anderson had had a wank on his lunch hour and had been reported by the housekeeper either vain enough to imagine that this had something to do with her ill-fitted working class wardrobe her curves were constantly struggling to escape or angered that she would have to wipe down a toilet seat once more with a chorine-based cleaner. Hanger and Ferguson had been clever enough to have quickly issued erroneous complaints on one another after coming into work that same rainless morning to find their direct supervisor had discovered a bag of white powder which he wanted to discuss. Lola had been sent to this same hell by hers after flirting with a client trying to book a last-minute flight to Mallorca (a victory for feminism, one would otherwise think). Tarleton was simply a truffle pig for sniffing out trouble and a bog-standard pig where women were concerned. He likely deserved that which he was actually being punished for.

What he did not deserve, what none of them did, was John André and his acting talent.

He looked longing at the closed door, wishing he had the dignity to deny them a performance.

He shut his eyes and sighed to himself. He was a professional, or would be as soon as he manged to catch the eye of a casting director.

He had to stay.

He was simply too generous with his gifts.

“Francis do you want to start again from the top?” Philomena offered, ignoring André’s criticism by turning to face one of the men for whom she was rumoured to have spread her legs between sets.

John André felt a surge of anger take him once more, jealous of this man who had taken his lover and stolen his role. He would use this to show Philomena how far she had fallen by incorporating it into a proper portrayal. He had heard enough in the mindless banter preceding the seminar to understand the scene his two colleagues were meant to portray. Tarleton had bet a married man that he could have his way with one of his mistresses, who herself had discovered this act of speculation well after having allowed herself to be seduced. The two were meant to recreate the breakup that only just occurred that it serve the same lesson the whole of western culture had been consumed with since forcing capitalization on a personal pronoun and adverb when paired. ‘Me Too’ meant only that women did not like sex in the workplace, though, André thought bitterly Philomena Cheer, Director of Human Resources, seemed to thrive on it. She gave Rawdon a smile that might have been described as telling. André found his ire at the whole of this injustice could and should not be contained. “Should we instead leave the acting to professionals?” he said, directly offering his services, feeling he had much more to bring to the role of whomever it was that Tarleton had last pissed off.

The performance, however, had seemingly taken a profound hold on its target, irrelevant and uninspired as André considered Rawdon’s rendition to have been.

“Wait,” Tarleton blinked. “I’ve just realised something, I ‘ave.” He turned to his audience, taking a head count of those present – mostly members of his own department.

“That women are not objects,” Philomena coached.

Tarleton did not seem to hear her. “You, all of you, owe me money,” he smirked, obviously satisfied with himself.

“How do you come on that?” someone asked.

“O’rite,” Tarleton explained, speaking slowly as though he too struggled to follow his own logic, “we said on Monday that Mary’d end things if my Christmas gift took the form of Messi Cirque tickets, but we’re through and that didn’t even play a part.”

The room became animated with this accusation. “Did we set a monetary value on that?” Ferguson puzzled. “That was just bants, aye!” Hanger countered. “If you need a cry and cuddle – in London. In February, providing you don’t expect an escort to this messy … whatever,” Lola teased.

“You are all pathetic,” André murmured beneath his breath.

“This isn’t -” Philomena started, but she had already lost control of the room.

Hugh X-mas seemed poised to take it from her.

André watched the man who shared his office as his telling-face turned from embitter to interested, realising there was a market he had yet to tap. Hugh followed the conversation and began to calculate odds, ending the banter before it could come to a brawl but failing to endear himself to Human Resources in the process. The previous morning, Hugh he turned on his computer to find a virus on it, filling his screen with fetish pornography, niches André himself had not know existed. _“Happy Christmas, Oyster,”_ Simcoe had smiled at him, again to _“John, you’ve gone too far.”_

It soon seemed he had.

Word had travelled far and fast, and soon everyone in the building had reason to suspect that Hugh, whom they had doubtlessly considered altogether sexless until this point, got his jollies from watching overweight, unwashed adult men wearing pampers and bonnets whilst pretending to be babies with no control of their bodily functions. He had tried to remove the virus himself before surrendering to fate and phoning the IT department, confirming the rumour that they had long since heard.

Hugh either had too much honour or too much ire to give Simcoe’s name when he was later called into HR and told to attend a seminar the following morning. Coincidently, Philomena Cheer’s knowledge of the whole circus was the result of the complaint made against André, himself having commented on the ass of a certain member of the tech team when he had gathered with the others behind Hugh’s computer to marvel at Simcoe’s decrepit genius.

Certainly, Hugh was planning a further retaliation.

He had gone out for lunch that day in order to use the pub’s loo after using the office lavatories to lewd questions on whether he was wearing a diaper himself, if he spent so much of his time around the housekeeping cart in hopes of convincing Anna to wipe his butt and burp him. _“I can’t go to the bathroom at work anymore,”_ he said when he clocked out an hour early with a particularly pained look. Simcoe snorted back a laugh, admitting that this had gone better than he had planned.

Their fellow payroll representative might well be ruing his decision now. With half the office forced to attend a seminar, Simcoe was likely having to shoulder the workload of the entire team. Rogers certainly would not volunteer himself to create cover. Hugh, likely conscious of this current predicament, was grinning.

“House wins. I’ve just doubled my bonus,” he whispered, listing off a number of upcoming football matches he thought would distract Tarleton from that task he had just acquired himself of winning the girl back that he might give her tickets to a bizarre aerobics act to test if this would prove grounds for another split.

Dissatisfied with the outcome, Tarleton complained in the ugliest of English accents, “This all 'appened outside o' de office. Ay don’t evun kun why we ay witti'n about it e'yer.”

André was about to comment, but someone spoke his mind before he could open his mouth.

“We are here because Human Resources wants to justify its existence,” a baritone came from the back of the room. André turned to applaud the man for his courage, causing others to do the same.

“Alright, John André, why don’t you show us all how a ‘real actor’ handles a scene?” Philomena spat. “Benedict, since you call my methods into question, would you like to join him?”

 

* * *

 

“For a drink?” André clarified as the room began to empty. For the past fifteen minutes had been made to portray the women he had complimented the day prior, who had all then reported their discomfort, whilst André, who believed himself a gifted actor, gave his best imitation of Arnold as he imagined him to have behaved in the act of complimenting near strangers. It was subtler than Arnold would have otherwise expected of the man, more of a mockery of Human Resources and the exercise as a concept then the complaints as he understood them. At times, Arnold had struggled to stay in character as he tried not to laugh at André’s antics, at the expression Miss Cheer wore in observing this charade, at the compliments that felt increasingly personal as the act continued.

John André still seemed lost on some stage. Arnold almost felt lost in his eyes.

“Tonight?” he blinked, breaking the spell.

“I thought … maybe you could use …” a beer? A bit of company? André did not clarify.

“Are you serious?”

Half an hour into waiting, it seemed he had not been. The corner bar by the office and beneath his studio flat was beginning to clear out by the time André finally arrived.

“I was beginning to think this was one of payroll’s famous pranks,” Arnold tried, explaining the two drinks he had ordered a few minutes after his own arrival and had since finished on his own.

“I’m … not involved in all that,” André paused. “I’m barely involved in anything that goes on upstairs, much as I like to pretend otherwise. Any road, apologies for the day, rehearsal ran late, and I – I think I owe you a round.”

“I don’t have any friends at the office either,” Arnold offered.

“I would not worry about it too much giving the select company,” André answered. Arnold, however, was genuinely pained by his own admission.

“I hate this place,” he said.

“Cheers to that,” André answered. “What did you do to wind up here anyway?”

Without entirely knowing why, Arnold told him at length about his tragic but altogether unremarkable life, how has father had been an alcoholic, how his mother had left, how he had grown up as a ward of the state – uncertainty replacing structure. How he had wanted to play football in high school – “real football,” he clarified, “the sort that serves as a contest of strength and valour, not this garbage of falling to the pitch in tears when an opponent brushes your shoulder in hopes of giving a teammate a chance to shoot a penalty.” André chuckled. “I wanted to do a lot … to embody the American Dream in all the ways that one might. Instead I wound up in real estate after the housing bubble with nothing but a community college certificate to fall back on. Then I worked at a kiosk, and then, when the owner, trying to avoid his debts, returned to … I can’t remember,” he confessed, “some country with enough Muslims to be considered hostile but without enough oil to warrant a full-scale invasion, I decided I’d try my luck abroad as well. I only speak English; my options were limited.”

“Well, I almost speak five and I’m right here beside you.”

 Arnold moved to reach for his beer but found André’s hand atop his own. Their eyes locked and the otherwise captivating blonde offered him a stale line, thanking him for opening up, that he had never met a man quite like him. Arnold did his best not to laugh. “I don’t think this is that kind of bar,” he said, taking his hand away. “You are really trying to make it as an actor?”

André looked hurt. Arnold realised the question came across as more critical and condescending than he intended. “I only ask because I noticed the volume of Shakespeare -” he began to lie, stopping abruptly when he remembered that the ‘Holiday Gift Exchange’ which had already landed him in so much trouble with HR was meant to be anonymous. “How do you ‘almost’ speak five languages,” he adjusted.

“My parents are Swiss,” André answered. “So in addition to English I know how to severely mispronounce words in German, French, Italian and Romansh.”

“That is impressive,” Arnold told him. “How long have you been living in the UK?”

André merely shook his head. “Since birth. Mine is a far less adventurous tale. I’m from London, left a few years ago when my salary could not keep up with the cost of living, and found myself here, working a dull job with uninteresting colleagues who haven’t the facility to apricate the arts. Uninteresting meaning the men in my office – payroll. Benedict you are …” he began, again giving him a look that made Arnold fear he would be subjected to another monologue the same day he had been made to sit through Rawdon’s impromptu Aquitaine. “You are from Connecticut,” André concluded in wide-eyed wonder.

“And that redeems me?” Arnold wondered, this time unable to contain his amusement. Though hardly a charmer himself, he found the act of watching André’s attempts at flirtation hysterical. It was almost as though the man had the intention of asking him to come ‘round to his and watch ‘Brokeback Mountain’, ‘The Notebook’ or something staring Audrey Hepburn. Arnold, though never reciprocal, was often the target of this sort of attention from single, middle-aged men. He signalled for the barman and ordered them both a shot of something top shelf, half-worried that such would seem as though he was affording too much credit to André’s one-man-show, half-hoping the hard drink would let cause his throat to contract in such a way that his appreciation of this comedy would be less apparent, that his laughter would face more of a struggle to escape.

As pathetic as he was to behold, John André proved pleasant company.

“I’m sorry,” Arnold said. “I don’t mean to laugh, it is only -”

“I am serious,” André interrupted. He truly did seem it. Arnold nodded for him to continue.

“Admittedly I … have only the vaguest notions of North American political geography … but Connecticut, is that not close to Massachusetts? Have you ever been?”

“That is not at all what I was expecting,” Arnold found himself laughing again, “but to answer your question, yes, yes I have.”

“What do the people there sound like?”

“The people of Massachusetts or of Boston?” Arnold tried to clarify. André looked slightly confused. “In the capituh, they drop the ‘r’ sound in an ‘a-r’ combinatiuh but add it to the end of words beginnin’ with an ‘a’, most words wind up endin’ in an ‘uh’, and the ‘g’ gets dropped in the continuous presence tense,” he tried to demonstrated as he explained.

“That doesn’t sound Scottish.”

“It isn’t meant to?” Arnold squinted.

“Sorry it is just … Robert Rogers tried to tell me that he was from Massachusetts, faulting my disbelief on the fact that I’d never been and therefore had no idea what the population actually sounded like. Thank you I … normally I am so mindful of regional dialects that I though I was going mad.”

“Mindful because you are an … actor?”

“Something like that,” André smiled. For a moment, it seemed as though he processed a healthy level of self-irony. “I have one line in the production I am currently in. The work itself is um … I think it is intended to be performed by and for school-aged children, but I keep telling myself if I can just _sell_ it, to really be convincing as the Angle Gabriel that it, that I … that it might lead the bigger things.”

“Let’s hear it then,” Arnold said, surprised at his own curiosity.

“My line?”

“Come on.”

André’s expression grew earnest in the way it tried at when he had reached for his hand in an effort to show how moved he had been by the parts of his life Arnold had reduced into a few sentences. His forehead wrinkled against his raised eyebrows making him look fully the age Arnold suspected he would find on André’s driving licence. It was the only honest part of the performance that followed. “Mary, you are so special. You are God’s favoured one: Chosen to give birth to His only Son.”

“That rhymes,” Arnold observed. André had clearly gone in with some effort, but this was the only remark he had. Benedict Arnold felt genuinely sorry for him. “The whole thing does,” André gave.

Arnold explored his vocabulary for a suitable compliment. “Well, I’m moved,” he offered. “When does it open?”

“Would you really come?” his colleague asked with a hope that might better be described as desperation.

“Sooner than I’d see Francis in ‘The Lion in Winter’.”

André was silent for a long while. He finished his glass of wine before he could bring himself to admit. “That kills me. Him. That play. I didn’t even get an audition.”

Arnold simply shrugged. “Personally, I prefer ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ if restricted to the month of December and the reign of Henry II.” It was honest. André’s jaw fell as though to indicate this was the only truth he had ever been given. If those in his company convinced him he could in fact act, such might well be the case. Arnold took a deep breath.

“Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain:

Temptation shall not come in this kind again.

The last temptation is the greatest treason:

To do the right deed for the wrong reason,” he began to recite. André looked moved to tears. “A fellow thespian?” he smiled.

Arnold considered playing with this bold statement a bit but decided that the world had proven itself to be filled with enough falsities. “My dude, my guy,” he shook his head. “I worked in a bookstore for a while as a teenager. That is all.”

“You are spectacular.”

“You are drunk.”

“Yes, but I’ve had enough practice with this state that the illusions inbound in liquor are increasingly hesitant to approach.”

“You overestimate your own skillset.”

“Is that an attack on my monologue?” André seemed to flirt. “Why wouldn’t it be, should I do better to recite another?”

Arnold shook his head. “Can I ask you something? I don’t mean to offend you, I am genuinely honest – has this whole stick ever worked for you? I like you, admittedly in spite of myself I do, but, what exactly are you trying to play at? You are smart, you are probably more sensitive than most and probably see suffering as its own form of art – but you are not a character and this isn’t a stage. Why go about pretending? I … here,” he said, leaning forward as he reached into his back pocket, taking the love letters he had collected from his wallet. “I had plans to take her on a romantic getaway. I spent two days pretending to myself … now that every woman at work has spared no effort in showing me I’m despised – I’ve never felt more alone. And I’ve always, _always_ been lonelier than it feels possible to bear. Maybe that is your problem, too. You try too hard, John. I don’t know. I don’t think you are fooling anyone. I don’t think we can cast people in the parts we want them to play no matter how well delivered our lines may be. Maybe it is a ruse, maybe it is sport, but I am not one for these games.”

“Maybe she isn’t either,” André suggested almost mutely. “Whomever she is.”

 

* * *

 

It was not planned, being here, pinned up against his wall. John André wrapped his arms and legs around Arnold, wanting to touch as much of the man as possible, feeling himself growing stiff as their tongues waged war. He felt the muscles in Arnold’s heavy arms tighten as he carried him from behind the closed door of his small flat a storey above the pub where he, unknowingly, had suggested they meet to the living room sofa, already folded out into a bed.

“Did you intend to bring me upstairs all along,” André teased him.

“I never receive company. I’ve never made it up,” Arnold said of the pull-out mattress on which he laid his lover. “I just … this doubles as my bedroom,” he explained. André looked around. Art. Records. A lifting bench and weights that doubtlessly bore numbers that afforded Arnold his impressive physique. A bookshelf that looked ready to collapse beneath its load and a separate pile of hardcovers which André could reasonably assume contained the works of renaissance masters, each to heavy to trust to entrust to the furniture, to share space on his displaced coffee-table with an ashtray, several tea (or perhaps coffee) mugs and an emptied bottle of the American version of Budweiser that had been transformed into a candleholder and looked to have gone through several incarnations of wax in this role. John André felt completely at home, here, on this strange set, lightly illuminated by street lamps and passing cars whose headlights shown through the opaque curtains.

“You are the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen in my life,” André whispered. “Your body, your soul your … you are everything.”

“I’m as lost as you,” Arnold said from atop of him, crushing André under his weight as he fought with the buttons of his shirt, admitting, “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“With a man?”

“With anyone.”

“Here I always thought you were impatient.”

“To get your top off yes, when it comes to, um … I like to think I’m romantic. That I give women ample opportunity to say no. Which they … admittedly, often take.”

“I’m not like them,” André said, slipping out of his silk before his fingers began the far more pleasant task of working way down Arnold’s torso, exposing his abs and loosing his breath in the process.

“You are exactly like them.”

“Maybe,” André admitted, not wanting to think of the tricks he had played. Arnold deserved better than what he had been given. André deserved better than that which he threatened to become – bitter and spiteful in ways failing artistic or even interesting. A sad sight to behold. He flexed his pecks as much as the pressure of Arnold’s considerable weight would allow, hoping to undo in the action the less aesthetic effects of countless evenings prior, evenings of inebriation he had mistaken for attraction, even love.

Arnold was right. He was exactly like those women he privately judged and openly mocked with his unworthy advances. He was shallow, petty – cruel in how quick he was to cast any notion to the contrary aside. Arnold’s expression told that he was not much impressed with him. He laughed at his lines, those tired, those trying. He told him what he thought, brooding but failing to bore. André smiled as he watched Arnold struggle to free himself of his trousers, seemingly fearful that if he should relive the pressure he was applying even slightly, then his would-be lover would surely flee. “There is nowhere in the world I would rather be,” André fluttered. “No one I would rather be with. Benedict, you are everything I have ever dreamed and nothing I may have ever thought -”

“John,” Arnold smiled, less at him than at the impressive size of his own exposed member, “do you ever shut up?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone remembers that scene I published some months back where Banastre Tarleton explains how much of the Merseyside accent he was sparing his American opposition from, this is what he was on about. **If you were wondering.**
> 
> Though it is stated in the text, since some of you are like me and enjoy reading the notes first, the two monologues featured are from **The Lion in Winter** and **Murder in the Cathedral.** And yes, I am always down to talk early Plantagenets. Any time. Anywhere. Hit me up boo. ;)
> 
>  **John Burgoyne** was an 18th century playwright who afforded his lavish lifestyle by buying and selling officer commissions as though they were stock. His most famous work was of course his defeat at Saratoga. In 1775 he cast **Francis Rawdon** in a stage production which he wrote. I’m sure it was excellent. 
> 
> **”the American version of Budweiser”** as opposed to the Czech version.
> 
> So! What are you drinking tonight, lovely faces? I, personally, really do favour Capri Sun. It is the best. Even at a bar in your twenties. Annnyway, hope you have a fun night whatever you get into. <3
> 
> Up next: Santa


	4. Santa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> André and Arnold learn that they were one another’s Secret Santa to anger, regret and personal embarrassment. Plus! the dramatic conclusion to a week’s worth of workplace warfare within the payroll department.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I am lucky enough to enjoy some crossover readership between this small seasonal offering and my magnum opus of TURN fic that is Hide and Seek. Since I just published three massive chapters back to back to back, I’ve still one foot caught in that realm of introducing thinly concealed social criticism with a stupid personal narrative, and as such I am just going to run with the trope. Remember how last time in H+S there was a conversation between two secondary characters that touched on Facebook (probably not, but it was in there) – well! I got a card from one of my aunts in Italy this past week that just … adds to the argument, shall we say, and I thought I would share it.
> 
> Okay, so about a week after my birthday passed, I got a card from this Auntie abroad. I am of course always happy to hear from family but I opened the envelope with a certain expectation ( … I don’t know why, I’m a twin born into circumstance where non-immediate family either only remembers my brother or forgets us both) - anyway, I open this card expecting “Happy Birthday!” but instead read (I kid you not) “I miss seeing your posts on Facebook. Why don’t you log in anymore?”
> 
> … I just. 
> 
> I mean I get that there is a generational gap between how she and I use and tend to view social media but (speaking as a 90s baby), I don’t personally harbour any illusions that I’ve ever used my voice on such sites in a real or meaningful way - identity politics _are_ important but I’m not the best person to be like “this is what it is like being an immigrant with parents form two separate countries and two very different cultural backgrounds from each other’s and from the third in which I was primarily raised” or whatever because confused diaspora has been done and I see myself as just paying the same taxes as everyone else in Germany and experiencing the same train delays, etc. etc. And to completely contradict what I just said, because my family has a string of conservativism within it on both sides (be it religious or socioeconomic) I’ve never (to memory) posted all that much about like what I got into at the weekend, for example, the way older people like to have it – so … what exactly _was_ I writing about two years ago that my Auntie missed so much she decided to post me a card out of the blue?
> 
> Oh yeah. Right. … Football. Apparently, my observations are worth time and the cost of postage. (They are not! They are so not!) But there is still something so delightful that anyone would go out of their way to tell me they miss this really tiny thing in their weekend feed (when actually, I mean, she lives in Milan, I’m sure she has enough people trashing Inter without my being among them. To that end, I don’t even like Serie A as a neutral spectator, I don’t – yeah it was the strangest not-Birthday-card I ever received.) 
> 
> So, ladies and gents, what mindless hate did you once spread through humour on a site that has since become passé? Your voice is worth more than you realise … maybe? It was a really weird thing to get in the mail.
> 
> Okay – and without a clever segue, here is the penultimate chapter to a Christmas story I’ve been writing since September! As always, I hope you enjoy!

Apologising had been an error.

John André sat alone in an otherwise crowded office with nothing to open beyond an envelope containing a card which said in short that his attempt to correct and compensate for the trick he had play had been ill received. He had woken up alone in Arnold’s flat the day prior, well past when his lover had left after making several attempts to rouse him from the sheets that they had shared the night before. The time on André’s watch told him that if he hurried, he could still have made it to work on time, which also meant that he had had time to ring up Human Resources with a finely crafted excuse as to why he couldn’t make it in at all. His heating broke the night before, he had said. He had to wait for workmen to arrive and had been given a window between ten and two. He knew from experience that saying he was ill would require him to find a doctor to write him leave and though Philomena Cheer would be equally as likely to ascribe this absence to alcohol, it might remind her of the nights she had spent wrapped up under several blankets in his freezing flat, exchanging sloppy kisses with their limbs entwined, and were that the case, she, like André himself, would be so embarrassed by the memory that she would not call any attention to it by inquiring after a work order receipt from his power company.

He was surprised that she addressed him at all when she walked into the office to drape a garment over the back of Rogers’ chair.

“What’s thes?” Robert asked, seemingly delighted at the prospect of looking like a roadie rather than a resident of Lime Street Station as he slipped his heavy frame into the biker jacket his ‘Secret Santa’ who doubtlessly referred to herself as a ‘Holiday Giver’ bestowed upon him. On the final day of the mandatory exchange a price limit was not set. It was the day everyone got excited about, where rather than sample-sized bottles of scented lotion or chap-stick packaged to look like a candy-cane one might find something on their desk that they might like underneath a tree. André did not need to stand to watch the scene unfold as the dividers to the four cubicles had been removed due to Thursday morning damages; Simcoe having given Hewlett a Christmas Cracker containing a live explosive. That either of the two were still employed, André considered, likely owed itself to a work ethic impressive in comparison to his own. He would have to do better next year.

“It is vegan leather!” Philomena answered proudly of the jacket as though she had done something good for the world that went beyond stimulating the Brexit economy.

John André studied the garment. It was fetching in itself and fit Rogers well, but though no animal had died in its production the imitative material suggested stories by Dickins that weren’t routinely told at yuletide – children working in factories under horrendous conditions for next to nothing.

Philomena smiled. She had in theory saved a cow whilst contributing to global economic inequality. She would probably have a double cheeseburger for lunch without noting the hypocrisy in the esteem she had found in some store’s tag-description.

“You’re really saving the world,” André commented bitterly under his breath. Philomena short him a hard look and Rogers’ face fell. “Diz 'at meen techt Ah’ll need tae feed it, Pet?” he asked, perplex and defeated.

“It means it is plastic,” André sneered. It was far too early for Philomena, her faux-fabric and fully underserved sense of self-righteousness.

“And what did you give your gift-ee?” she inquired sweetly through a clenched-tooth smile.

“I made him steak and eggs for dinner last night,” André replied, staring at the card he had been given in reciprocation. “An animal had to die for that one,” he almost bragged. “Several, if you count the wee birds.”

“I could do with a dead animal,” Simcoe muttered to himself. Hewlett stifled a laugh. The gangly ginger had walked merrily into the office not half an hour before, presenting them all with Christmas cookies his wife and daughters had baked, visions of sugar plums no doubt dancing in his head as he smiled over the holiday he had until such point imagined himself spending at home rather than with his hated in-laws at their country-estate somewhere down in Devon. Simcoe had walked in on what might have been a happy ending to a week of secret courtship were it not for the gift he had gone through pains to arrange for his friend and colleague. Anna Strong of the housekeeping push-cart, push-up bras and too-tight trousers had agreed to spending her well-deserved holiday stargazing with Edmund (as the smaller Scot was apparently called) – whatever, exactly, that was meant to be code for. When she had left with a smile to wash eggnog and stomach acid out of the sales floor carpet (likely not for the last time that day) Simcoe had congratulated his sometime-friend on his triumph, telling him that he never doubted that he would find love in a time of war.

‘ _But now I fear I’ve to deliver the final blow,_ ’ he said, handing Hewlett a white envelope with the firm’s logo on it. ‘ _Happy Christmas, Edmund._ ’

Edmund could barely contain his excitement. _‘It is two VIP tickets to Newcastle at Anfield on Boxing Day – John, how did you even get these?’_

‘ _Most things are possible with the benefit of my wife’s salary,’_ Simcoe brushed him off, _‘But it gets better – guess who you will be sitting beside?’_

‘ _You?_ ’ Hewlett sneered.

‘ _I’m not standing out in the cold with you to watch my side lose and risk your particular rendition of whatever stadium song -_ ’

 _‘Anna,’_ he realised, recalling the conversation that had only just transpired, _‘but, she hates football, I -_ ’

 _‘No, no – if you recall, Klopp has a pitch ban after running onto the field last week to celebrate the other team’s own goal. You’ll be sitting with arguably the best trainer to never win anything in Britain. As to Anna, since your keen on moving much too fast, I’m in essence giving you your first real fight as a couple. Either bring her as your plus one and condescendingly man-splain the game as she shivers in her seat or run and tell her that the situation has changed and it is impossible for you to enjoy the entire week in one another’s company,’_ Simcoe said with slanted eyes and a half-smile.

 _‘Well played John,’_ Hewlett applauded him. _‘It seems great minds think alike. I drew Anna by luck but by love I decided to go all out in finding the perfect holiday-ruining present for you as well. Go on, open it,’_ he said, stepping away from the large box in holiday paper that stood nearly to his waist. _‘I’m happy to rewrap it afterwards – actually,’_ he grinned, producing a proper Santa-sack from underneath his desk, _‘I’ll likely spend most of my morning in the company of bows and ribbons as I think of how to possibly sell Anna on Anfield – what are a few more?’_

‘ _Wa nae jist ask Tarleton hoo tae sort yer quine problems?_ ’ Rogers suggested, unhelpfully. _‘Tauld me thes morn 'at he is back wi' his burd efter givenin' 'er them circus tikets sae he micht hae a tak' oan thes.’_

‘ _Because that would require_ talking _to Tarleton and if what you say is true, then I actually own him money_ ,’ Hewlett frowned. _‘Was he in payroll to complain about another commission? A bit early, even for him._ ’

‘ _Nae Ah hud tae introdce mahself an' gie heem mah gift,_ ’ Rogers shrugged.

‘ _Ah,_ ’ came a three-man chorus of realization.

 _‘What could have possibly surpassed powdered sugar masquerading as anthrax?’_ Simcoe wondered.

‘ _Ah woods hae saved time an' bunsens hud it bin th' real hin',’_ Rogers grumbled to himself. _‘Paid his tab at th' club he goes tae an' brooght heem th' receipt.’_

 _‘Practical,’_ Hewlett nodded approvingly. André began to wonder at all of the bars at which he had tabs open before having his thoughts interrupted by a horrified gasp.

 _‘It sings,’_ Simcoe discovered of the ‘life-size’ Elsa doll he had just unwrapped.

 _‘They all do,’_ Hewlett smiled, pouring a year’s worth of Frozen merchandise out before his cherished rival. _‘I’ve been shopping since your last birthday,_ ’ he said proudly, _‘I figured, your girls obviously like the film and the songs from it, and what better way to remind you of your defeat than an invading army of singing Faux-Scandi Queens demanding quarter in your little girl’s rooms? Don’t bother trying to bring them to charity donation at this late hour – I already texted Eliza with pictures and she told me the girls will be happy to have them. ‘Thanks, Uncle Edmund,_ ’’ he said of himself, _‘Enjoy your ‘quite holiday at home’, John.’_

André stood in applause. _‘That is passive aggression on levels unseen,’_ he said in genuine admiration.

_‘Edmund Hewlett, I hereby surrender my sword.’_

_‘Duly accepted.’_

And so, John André learned the full name of the man whose he could never quite remember. Now, he would never forget.

“Fur lunch?” Rogers asked of Simcoe’s desire for blood.

“No, a week’s long hunting trip. Immediately. Reconnect to nature.”

“Aye lit it snaw,” Rogers agreed. André pictured him reconnecting to this nature Simcoe spoke of in his new ‘vegan leather’ luring a pigeon with a crisp left at the bottom of a McDonald’s bag he had found in the same bus-stop rubbish bin of wherever it was he slept before setting it aflame in order to grill an unsuspecting bird.

“I think you mean ‘Let It Go’,” Hewlett corrected.

“Aye, coods hae dain,” Rogers agreed sharing his chuckle. Simcoe looked ready to kill them both. André shared his sentiment.

“The plumber never showed yesterday,” he told Philomena. “I have to go and … wait it out. In the cold. Without the benefit of vegan leather to -”

“May I see that?” she interrupted, taking the card from his hand before he could object. “No, John, you can’t go home, but you can accompany me to my office.”

 

* * *

 

Philomena had spent roughly twenty minutes echoing the same sentiments Arnold expressed in his card, albeit in a jargon that recalled on prior experience to cypher. He did not need to know which lines he had crossed or laws he had broken, where they were detailed in the company manual which he signed upon accepting employment and what paragraph or article was being referenced from whichever piece of labour practice legislation when his erstwhile lover pointed out his absence of ethics and etiquette. “You are lucky,” she told him when either she finished or decided it was with her better interest to reserve her voice for the evening’s opening curtain, “Arnold has yet to file a complaint.”

With that she dismissed him, consenting to his request to return to his flat to contending with his heater, which turn out to neither be broken nor capable of warming him from the chill that had taken root upon reading his Santa’s words. André felt a tear roll down his check -another and another still until he was certain both his eyes and face were red from the uncontrolled effort. He retook the response Arnold had left to the confession he had given him the day prior from his coat pocket – noting irony that this was the same hand that had won his respect on Monday morning with the word ‘X-mas’ scribbled on a Post-It to distinguish the bag of crisps likely purchased in the vending machine on the same floor from whatever alternate idea he might have formed. He had admired his mystery-giver’s absence of seasonal flair and disregard for a politically correct nomenclature that served no purpose when Chanukah had come and gone without mention and Eid passed six months prior with a few questions of ‘ _is Ramadan over or are you on your period?_ ’ posed at women of colour from white male staff members which oddly offended neither Allah nor Human Resources’ ideas on sexual or religious discrimination –

But they could not say ‘Christmas’.

Not at work.

Arnold, it seemed, could not even be bothered to write it out in full.

When André considered this against everything else which he had come to know of the man, everything he had misjudged prior to truly making his acquaintance, he felt himself sadder still, for Arnold, ultimately, was otherwise nothing like him in such respects. He was honest and eager; his heart, though heavy, allowed itself to hope. Disappointment had found its place in his absence of holiday spirit, however, and André found himself sobbing once more at the memory of Arnold telling him about a plan that had lived shortly in his phantasy of taking someone who might have been special (had she not in fact been an invention of André’s boredom) to a snow-covered cabin over those holy nights that so often seemed hallow.

Apologising had been an error as had acknowledging the fact that the flirtation had begun as artificial when it had since taken on an altogether new form. His logic had been based in the observation that Arnold admired honesty, integrity – characteristics André was beginning to find failed him. After waking up on the sales associate’s fold out mattress having spent the full night in the man’s massive arms, he phoned into work with an excuse for his absence, investing the next fair few hours examining the objects he related by location to be extensions of Arnold. He flipped through his bookshelf, studying the margins in which his lover had interacted and engaged with the text in the same hasty handwriting André was quick to recognise as being that from his desk. He looked at the underlined passages in those well-read classic works of poetry and prose few revisited after college had they encountered them at all, admiring Arnold’s intellectual organization of noting the date in which a particular line or verse spoke to him above all others, trying to follow a life that seemed to spill from the pens of true masters.

Arnold pined and grieved and fought and loved and bleed – all without the benefit of acknowledgment or reciprocation.

Peggy Shipped had been right about what he would likely have wanted for Christmas had he still the constant courage to wish, and, rather than deliver and all that he clearly deserved, André had given him little more than a reminder of how alone he was.

Or, perhaps, how alone he had been.

Most of André’s affairs ended when the sun rose, when the rosé shared the evening prior gave way to regret on the part of whomever had shared in his embrace. Arnold had not asked him to leave, but rather had left a key in case he should which seemed an invitation to stay. André admired his lover’s record collection, marvelled at the numbers he read on weights he himself could not lift and came on the idea to properly wine and dine the man that same evening in the secret sanctity of these walls that already knew their sins. He owed Arnold a gift for the one circumstance had denied him from putting on his desk. He owed him and explanation. He owed him and apology. He owed these things to himself in near-equal measure.

André emptied ash-trays, swept and engaged in other acts of tidying up which he rarely did as a rule and never for his own benefit. He folded the bed back into a couch, threw a knitted blanket askew over its side, fiddling with the folds in the fabric until he was satisfied that it resembled enough the romance promised in glossy adverts for home accessories in stores and papers targeting the ambition of the middle class. He went to these shops on his way to the grocer’s and returned with a few throw pillows with designs that did not distract from the masculinity suggested in all of Arnold’s dark furnishings, a few candles that perhaps might, a string a white fairy-lights to create to romance and magic of winters that seemed to appear only in story and song, and a table cloth on which to fully stage his scene.

Once satisfied with his decorations, André acquainted himself with Arnold’s kitchen slightly better than he had prior to his shopping spree. Previously, he had found little more than protein shake in powdered form, informing his chosen menu but offering little in the way of making it. Upon further inspection, he was able to locate a single pan amongst cupboards that seemed to otherwise only serve as additional clothing storage. It would do for the steak and eggs – both ‘free range’ and thusly carrying a considerable price tag.

Then he waited for Arnold to return.

One hour turned to the next.

Three had passed since the workday officially ended before André found himself a pen and a pad of paper, writing a confession that he had planned to deliver in person. With that, he left, dropping the keys in the letter box after blowing out the last lit candle and locking up.

 

The next morning, John André was early to work with a massive bouquet, only to find that his attempt at honesty were as unwelcome as his advances.

His words lingered.

As the day dragged into night, all others were lost.

 

* * *

 

He had one line, Arnold thought to himself in disbelief that bordered schadenfreude. From the back of a church auditorium, he found his holiday cheer in the costume choices making the most of the audience both physically uncomfortable and spiritually unsound as the spotlight glared upon André’s slim torso and the glittering body oil he had spread upon it to make his small muscles ‘pop’ as much as they might (or, alternatively, the questionable deacon had done in the hopes of feeling himself closer to God.) As per the standard he usually set, André seemed nothing of the character he was meant to portray and every bit a parody of himself, a clown in a tragic opera equating art with public shame.

It was difficult not to laugh, but Arnold considered himself too much of a gentleman to discourage the efforts of the chubby middle-aged woman with a choppy bob and brightly coloured rims the ophthalmologist had likely sold to her as ‘fun’ whom the production had found to play the Virgin Mary (likely at one of the many other charitable evens to which she looked to lend her time and energy) or the teenage Joseph sporting a faux-beard that looked like it originally belonged to a leprechaun costume who resisted whatever urge he must have felt to imitate the accent used in cereal advertisement when he spoke of the census in paired rhyme.

And so, Arnold sat in the back of an almost-full auditorium, twelve-quid poorer for this attempt at culture, satisfied only that the ticket price went to support a worthy cause (the question of which he did not concern himself over – at Christmas all causes were worthy and all donations tax deductible.) He had a receipt, and wondered if this might not be the true spirit of Christmas as he watched André choke on getting his single line out. The middle-aged Virgin Mary tried to discreetly coach the half-nude Archangel on what he was meant to say, but her mimic was visible to the audience even from the back row. “Mary, you are so special. You are God’s favoured one: Chosen to give birth to His only Son,” she mouthed.

“Mary, you are so special. You are God’s favoured one: Chosen to give birth to His only Son,” André repeated as though he had never heard these words before, as though they had been spoken in a tongue in which he was unsure of his abilities. He fled from the stage after speaking them, making the stage squeak under his heavy stomps, causing a few sympathy claps from both the audience and his fellow cast members still on stage. Arnold’s own hands remained rested on his knees as his eyes scanned the room, wondering if the others making no effort to applaud the poor performance were in fact the casting directors André had intended to impress. He leaned over to the man seated in front of him and inquired, only to be told that this particular neighbour was not sure of what he had just seen – he was required to be here by family obligation, his daughter was playing one of the sheep in the manger scene.

Arnold then watched intently for the little girl in white fleece whose line (“Baa!”) was spoken with confidence and conviction. The curtain drew to a close and the cast returned for their final bow as Christmas carols began to play and a recorded voice informed the auditorium of holiday service times, charity actions, and that Bible Study would be held on Thursday rather than Wednesday the following week. The lights were turned on and André climbed down from the front of the stage rather than exiting from behind the way a true professional or even a more dedicated amateur might.

“You came,” he said, breathless as he rushed to meet Arnold at the back of the house.

“Merry Christmas John,” Arnold said, realising he ought to have left the instant André had spoken the single line he struggled to deliver. He had left him the same bouquet of roses he found on his desk that morning back stage, partially in an ill-thought act of encouragement which André’s defeat had transformed into irony: “Dear John - Stupendous performance!” it read.

Arnold cleared his throat, “To clarify, the card I left you, that was in reference to the week we shared,” he said lest the other man get the wrong impression of him. “You took me for a fool and I hung on your every word, even when there was no question as to who had spoken them.”

“I’m not an angle … or, or much of an actor,” André admitted, “as you have witnessed for yourself. This between us, it began as a prank but as I came to know you, every word I spoke was in earnest, every word I had written in the days prior took on the same tone. I do fancy you Benedict. I want to celebrate Christmas with you as though it were Valentine’s Day. And no – I’m not Peggy or Abigail or Aberdeen or Zipporah or Lola or Mary or Anna or Philomena or any of the other women with whom we work … but I … I find I’m falling in love with you all the same. And if I had to do it all again to get to know you as I have than surely, surely, I would. I spent the whole day thinking about what you wrote to me, the whole day until no other words were left to me, until I found myself on stage in front of a nearly sold out house unable to connect to character because the only thing, the only thing in the world that mattered or felt remotely real was -”

“That you know, your steak was too dry?” Arnold squinted, quoting himself from memory. “You’ll do well to excuse my frankness, I’m a warrior, not a diplomat.”

“That is the loss I regret more so than my only line,” André told him earnestly.

“The steak?” Arnold again questioned.

“You Benedict! It was all for you, I – let me make it up to you somehow, reimburse you for all of the ills I’ve inflicted here.”

“No need, I’d eaten before returning to my flat. Since the performance was a charitable venture and I’ve a receipt for my ticket purchase, I can reclaim the twelve quid on my income repatriation form. As the pound is in freefall, I’ll actually be earning from the transaction -”

“That isn’t … that can’t be all I am to you,” André seemed to beg, reach out for his hand. Arnold let him hold it, but made no move to unclench his fist. “And should it be, still, please, let me take you out for dinner tonight,” André continued. “I promise I am better at making reservations than it seems I am at making steak and eggs … and holiday magic in whatever form I’d envisioned it taking before you convinced me otherwise. I know you don’t believe in Christmas anymore and perhaps I am part of that, but I don’t want to be – that is, I want to be part of yours. Your Christmas. And I want you to be part of mine.”

The applause began quietly and then erupted like enemy fire. It was only then Arnold realised they had gathered an audience. André had, in essence, that which he longed for but seemed now deaf to the support he was receiving at long last.

“Tonight?” Arnold frowned. “Only if you’ve brought a change of clothes. Set of cloths rather.”

André laughed and Arnold found himself sharing in his smile in spite of his better judgement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Lime Street Station** is the main railroad station in Liverpool. Despite André’s using the name as an insult, it is actually maintained by national infrastructure and not the city itself and as such is one of the nicest terminals in the UK.
> 
>  **Jürgen Klopp** is the most passionate man in football and in his role as LFC’s gaffer doubles a Germany’s goodwill ambassador to, well … everywhere. Recently he did run out onto the playing area in goal celebration, though I don’t foresee him repeating the action this week and thusly receiving a Boxing Day pitch ban for it – although, if he could make MY Christmas dreams come true by defeating Man U to the tune of whatever it will take to find ♥Mou♥ redundant and thus ready for some um … “legacy building” at Bayern (because I like a little disaster comedy in my viewing experience) I would be quite appreciative. COME ON YOU REDS! 
> 
> **Liverpool FC** will host **Newcastle United** this Boxing Day.
> 
> What are you doing at Christmas? Hopefully – returning for a romantic conclusion will find its place amongst your plans. 
> 
> Up Next: Season


	5. Sparkle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> André and Arnold go out to dinner and then up to Scotland for a Christmas they won’t soon forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sure by now you have all heard the news, but as Mourinho’s sacking was the entire premise to this fic and has been a staple of the notes section, I feel it is worth stating that I got my Christmas wish!!! Not only that, but the buzz around it is even better than I’d anticipated: get this you guys, the instant news broke the stock prices were driven up nearly six percent, meaning the club more than made up for the money it lost in Mou’s buyout clause. That is just so mad! 
> 
> As I was explaining to my friends when my phone blew up on Tuesday morning, I like sport, but I absolutely LOVE a boardroom shitstorm and the conditions are perfect for two fragile ego maniacs to meet in the worst possible manner. Think on it, yea? (in your best Hollywood trailer voice) _Mourinho. Hoeneß. An aging and injured squad struggling to qualify for major competition, often undone by their own overblown senses of self-worth. Unobtainable expectations._
> 
> Think of how painfully embarrassing the post-match press conferences would be.  
> I am SO here for this I can’t even – 
> 
> It is the best Christmas already. The rest will happen. Just you wait. ;) Kovac has already come out and commented on the incident: _"I just want to say that I feel sorry about every manager sacking, I can feel him, and my biggest wish is that no manager will be sacked anymore."_  
>  So, who knows, a deal may well already be in the works.
> 
> Anyway, now that I’ve that out of my system, here is (another) piece of fiction about two fragile ego maniacs that has nothing to do with lederhosen. Cheers!

John André studied him with perfect fascination, his curious blue eyes mirroring the creases in his wry smirk, charming under the glow of candlelight as most things were. For a moment Benedict Arnold paused to share in this strange sentiment, forgetting his thoughts and the words in which he was trying to convey them. He took another slice of bread from the basket and felt especially self-conscious in the act, both in that this was his third to the single slice André had taken and in that he had not planned on a cheat-day to the high-protein, low-carb eating regiment (which he refused to refer to as a diet) that had aided in affording him his physique when he had been earing enough to enter expensive private gyms with personal trainers who followed fad diets and took some kind of commission for every member they managed to convert.

“I’m sorry,” he excused himself, “It has been an eternity since I’ve had a slice of bread.”

At this, all of the natural humour in André expression faded. “Define eternity,” he posed, leaning in with heightened interest. Arnold had little idea as to what expectations his date held of him. For a moment, an image flashed through his mind of the two of them lifting weights in a generic gym of the fifty-dollar-per-month variety, himself making a sales pitch (half with his broad chest and biceps) as André struggled … and sparkled. Arnold returned to the moment as much as his imagination would allow, pressing his small thin lips inward to fight the smile that came with the thought of having to tell the armature actor to use a towel when he worked out as to spare more credible warriors his particular shine.

“Ten years give or take,” he answered simply, careful to avoid inflection. “I’m into body building, its something of a cardinal sin.”

André blinked, made a brief compliment with regard to his physique, and returned to the original statement with a list of food items transformed into questions by a raised pitch. Arnold, too, was taken by surprise. “I’ve never met anyone so interested in such a banal topic,” he told him. Mostly, women became self-conscious of their own figures when he tried to explain what he would and would not eat and began talking about their own (boring) beauty regiments as though they wanted reassurance.

André, in contract, offered, “I’ve never met anyone with your level of self-control without a religious or moralistic bend.”

To this, Arnold added, “Vegans and vegetarians will try to convert you, those who keep Kosher and Halal treat such talk as more of a chore than all of the ridiculous rules to which they feel bound,” feeling that as good as he might prove in such a sales-pitch, he privately closer resembled the later category.

“I don’t think I would have the personal discipline for any of it. Apologies that this is bothering you, it is not my intent, I’m just impressed. But really – _you’ve never had Walkers?_ What, honestly, what is the point of being in England? Everything we do well is starch-based.”

“What you state of chips can be applied to any aspect of life,” Arnold countered. “Isn’t that anywhere you find yourself? You and I, we are both bored of this town, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t loads to do, we just don’t. We are tired after work and after having seen museums, concert venues, theatre spaces in passing however many times they lose their wonder and our curiosity is cooled. So, we take holidays thinking that whatever we are missing can be easily found elsewhere, and maybe this is true, but then only because places that are foreign have yet to introduce their barriers or rather, we have yet to build them. I’ve passed your church hundreds of times without knowing of the … culture on offer within.”

“That is a terrible example,” André answered with a smile that seemed as forced as the abstract Arnold had given as an unspecific compliment.

“It is a perfect example because I don’t _do_ anything else. I don’t eat chips, I don’t go to shows. I go home, or I go for a run on the same route, or I go to the same bar and talk to the same people, same used bookstore, same café. Which makes it sound like I’m in a rut and I’m not I’m just … I’ve been here long enough to be local even though there is so much of Liverpool in which I don’t and may never partake.”

“You don’t miss home? At all? I miss London constantly and it isn’t as though I couldn’t visit.”

“I miss people, sure, but place is just – how different would my life be - day to day I mean - in Hartford?”

“Well being that you don’t partake in British culinary traditions, not much I imagine,” André teased, breaking a piece of bread for himself, copying Arnold’s hand-switching as he buttered it, having previously commented on the elegance he found in the more-refined American set of table manners. Arnold had never noticed that there was a difference until it had been pointed out.

“You are unbelievable,” he muttered with some measure of affection.

“On stage, certainly,” André agreed, seeming to ignore his tone, himself sounding far too sincere when he continued, “I am sorry that was how you were introduced to Liverpool’s theatre scene.”

Arnold realised he had yet to say anything with regard to the performance. “It was … avant-garde,” he tried, as diplomatically as he could find it within himself to seem, hoping that his own untested acting skills surpassed those of his company.

“It was awful, well _I_ was awful, I -”

“You were …,” Arnold began to agree, backtracking to, “have you ever seen a high school production of Woyzeck?” he attempted. He had read more plays than he had seen performed, something he assumed must be rue of most people, though in the moment he wished for a better frame of reference.

André raised his eyebrows, wrinkling his forehead, “No, but I’m intrigued. Do please continue.” He seemed earnest in that the expression which he likely considered unflattering remained. For reasons Arnold did not find worth the energy to analyse or even identify, he found his date far more handsome when he had forgotten about the features that normally made him behave self-consciously to the point of shared discomfort.

There was something entirely too compelling in André when he was being earnest and watching him lean forward in his chair, his long legs coming uncrossed, Arnold felt himself blush as he almost mechanically began to explain to him, “I’m fairly certain I don’t entirely understand the work in my mid-thirties and certainly had not when I first encountered it at fifteen, but one of the high schools which I went to briefly tried to stage it all the same. The dialogue,” he commented, “it is difficult, it is sentences spoken in fragments and I’m certain that in preparation - because they could not otherwise relate - half the cast had restricted their diet to peas and carrots -”

“I think it was only peas,” André interrupted, “In the play itself.”

Arnold did his best to recall the specifics, surrendering to what little had been left to him by the effects of elapsed time. “Could be, yeah. Regardless, whatever understanding they had of the text was lost in how it was conveyed to the audience … and I was reminded of the entire experience twenty years hence as I watched you struggle with ‘ _Mary, you are so special’_.”

André looked wounded but was quick to reprise his newly-discovered sense of self-irony. “That makes me feel worse about my performance but somehow better about the show itself. That you could attribute my own aspirations towards pretention as a comparison to teens method-acting their way through a show that no one blood gets. I’m flattered, truly,” he chuckled.

“The set was similar if memory doesn’t defeat,” Arnold commented out of hand.

“The set?” André seemed to question, taken slightly aback.

“Yours made a bit more sense.”

“Well there are religious undertones and references – Büchner, I mean.”

“Bible, too, I would think,” Arnold tried to joke.

“What did you think – of the set exactly?” André inquired slowly.

Arnold had no idea of what he was being asked to search for within himself. “It was surreal, both in concept and execution – I’d not have thought that cardboard and acrylic could prove quite so compelling,” he answered honestly.

André nodded through he did not seem to connect the statement to any understanding. “Watercolour was also … never mind,” he responded as though what Arnold had said had been intended as a criticism. He wondered if he was too blunt, if the show could only have been properly understood and analysed by those to whom it had been targeted – presumably, the parents of young children recreating farm animals in fleece and the truly devout who quite likely found their faith tested by the staging.

“I liked it,” Arnold assure André of the set, wondering if he had anything to do with its design but hesitant to ask outright. “The problem, if we are to cite one, from a technical aspect was the choice in costuming. I don’t entirely understand why you had a leprechaun or why, you, specifically, were in a loin cloth and body glitter.”

“Oh, that was for budgetary reasons. I actually wore the same during my performance as Jesus in the Easter Passion Play this past spring.”

Arnold blinked and questioned blandly before he could stop himself from doing so, “You portrayed our Lord and Saviour in body glitter?”

“It suggests divinity,” André smirked, perhaps in spite of himself.

“It suggests young adult novels – both vampiric and dystopian -”

“There are really only those two sub-genres,” André interrupted with his self-supposing agreement.

“John Green? I daresay you forget the airport kiosk.”

“For someone so adverse to place as you yourself are I’m surprised you would bring that up.”

“I’m not adverse to place I’m simply saying that we don’t appreciate the places we are. There is always this imbalance of home sickness and wanderlust halting any true appreciation of where we happen to be.”

André glanced down into his lap. “I’d go anywhere with you,” he said almost mutely after a moment of reflection.

“See? And now that you’ve said that I don’t ever want to leave this restaurant. The slow service, the way the candle light gives you such a divine sparkle.”

A smile returned to André’s lips.

 

* * *

 

“But it was only because my appendix burst,” he explained of the pain he had been able to channel on the Cross. “I had to be taken away in ambulance and in the Resurrection, Jesus was conveyed by a spotlight and what would have been my lines being spoken through the loud-speaker system. It actually received amazing reviews, which is why I worry that someone from the world of theatre was in the audience tonight.”

The two walked side by side back to his flat, their fingers occasionally grazing against one another’s, hesitant to hold. The had continued on in this way for nearly a mile, when suddenly Arnold stopped and grabbed his hand, nearly crushing it in a shared eagerness at last acknowledged and acted upon. André spun to meet him, still surprised to find himself looking up at his lover for he himself was taller than most other men. Arnold spoke with a concern he had not anticipated. “That is – you talk about my dedication, but to have a major medical emergency on stage and return to it?”

“It is really not as though that can happen twice,” André answered, wondering at how out of all of the people who as the result of his prank had found themselves victim to Arnold’s advances, it was he himself who in the end had been to lucky as to find himself fully concurred and in a state of unconditional surrender. He craved attention as Arnold sought someone to appreciate the details that captured his own. How, he wondered, was this perfect man still single? Benedict Arnold was cultured and learned without being intentionally abstruse, imperious and pompous without being the slightest bit haughtily, he was overbearing in his own art, but his strong chin and sculpted body were invitation enough for one to bend – be it over or to whatever whims the moment introduced to the man.

Then, he spoke. André was reminded of all of the reasons he had come to dislike him from a distance in the past.

“True, but its – what exactly are you getting from it anyway? Acting?” Arnold asked with a slight sneer.

“Dates apparently,” André winked.

“Oh, you think that is what this is?” he asked ironically, pulling him close enough that André could feel his lover growing stiff.

“I think you are following me back to my flat -” André began, interrupted by Arnold’s massive hand treading lightly against his check and chin, pulling André’s face closer to his own.

“Solid reasoning.”

Their kisses were strong and sloppy and André had to stand on the balls of his feet to find Arnold’s mouth, but he hardly minded the effort. Arnold did not bend and he did not bow and this, André found the longer their little act of affection went on, was as intriguing as it was inconvenient. With great struggle, he pulled himself away and breathlessly told the American that they two were only a block or so from his flat, if Arnold happened to be interested in coffee or a nightcap.

“That sounds so awfully rehearsed,” Arnold sought to mock.

“Does it?” André defended. “I’m not acting in the slightest.”

When the had  walked the remaining two minutes and two stairwells to his studio flat, André instantly found that it had been a mistake to turn on the lights.

“Do your talents never end?” Arnold asked as he looked around, seeing sketches of the set and the materials used to build it still laid out.

“Does your judgement?”

“I didn’t mean it as an insult, the set was gorgeous. You are an artist,” Arnold told him with a kind of wonder. André did not think the man so easy to impress and considered still that he was being insulted.

“I dabble,” he tried to brush him off, but Arnold’s eyes continued to dart about the exposed supplies that he had either yet to put away or find a proper space for within his tiny studio.

For both Arnold and himself, compliments always came with a catch.

“Here,” he said, tossing the American on of his sketchbooks. From the corner of his eye he watched Arnold flip through it with as much interest as André himself had afforded the other man’s bookshelf a day prior.

“Did you study portraiture?” Arnold asked, sounding genuine.

“No, no – I was one of those kids who got bored in class and sketched insulting caricatures of my teachers into my notes. Maybe as I’ve always had reason to hide it art has never taken on an element of attention seeking,” he murmured, mused.

“Could you draw me?” Arnold smiled, so eager André could hardly refuse.

“Like one of my French girls?” he suggested.

 

* * *

 

Benedict Arnold smiled as John André planted another kiss on the back of his neck, then another, then another until his lips had found their way to his earlobe – biting teasingly as he whispered, “Don’t move so much. I’ll mess it up.”

An outline still existed from the night before. Upon completing a paper sketch most to Arnold’s satisfaction, André had curled up beside him, his fingers flirting with Arnold’s still-bare skin as they continued to fall together into the traps invented by promises made when longing was allowed to linger. ‘ _I love you_ ,’ Arnold heard himself whisper though the sentiment was still uncertain. ‘ _Hm?_ ’ André wondered, a little dreary, drunk and lost in dreams of his own. ‘ _A tattoo,_ ’ Arnold had corrected. ‘ _Your touch._ ’

‘ _If you want, I’ll give you something slightly more lasting_.’

It was all he wanted. He had seen in André’s expression that neither of them was speaking of ink, but a ball point pen had created a convenient cover for shared feelings that felt too soon.

André had drawn a pin-up girl who bore a suspicious resemblance to Peggy Shippen of whom they had spoken at length. She danced when he flexed which made Arnold smile. He had been sad to see her washed away in the morning shower when he had returned home to pack his luggage upon inquiring if André had been serious about ‘anywhere’. The snow-covered cabin, he had told him, was already paid for.

They had met that morning at Lime Street Station, within walking distance of both of their city flats, Arnold delayed slightly by the sheer size of his luggage. He found André on the platform awaiting the train to Glasgow, distracted by the sight of another passenger, a fellow co-worker against whom he seemed to hold something of a grudge.

‘ _I have to say I’m offended that your ire and obsession isn’t exclusive to my department_ ,’ Arnold said after kisses had been exchanged in greeting and André had returned to commenting on Rogers – mostly in slights – wondering if he was going home for the holidays or if he in fact resided at the terminal as had long been a suspicion.

“So, to return to a prior conversation, I went and interrogated my fellow American,” Arnold was able to report back to him after returning to their shared carriage form the on-board restaurant with two cups of coffee and an assortment of creams and sweeteners. “Robert Rogers is most assuredly not from Massachusetts, Boston or otherwise.” He had seen the pretender at the bar buying provisions and amused himself by trying to appeal to any lingering patriotic sentiment the man might carry in his heart. A few lines into his reciting the Pledge of Allegiance upon spotting the flag used as a sales gimmick on an overpriced single-package snack, he inquired as to why his alleged countrymen had not joined in, obtaining what he suspected to be a full confession had only he been able to discern anything said in the Scots dialect. Satisfied with the response, he left the confused teenager working behind the counter with the change from his purchase and rushed back to his travel companion, coffee in hand. In his hurry, Arnold had spilt a goodly portion of his own on his shirt, which forced him to remove it in favour of another once he had found his way back to the compartment.

John André watched with interest and earnest as, still cursing, Benedict Arnold unbuttoned himself. He became taken with something in the man’s expression, something that he had seen before but that ran so contrast to everything he had previously thought he had not afforded it much consideration. André was no actor, but he too often wore a mask – a smile that somehow hid his features – the fine lines in his face, the less apparent scars of age, joy, anguish or otherwise. He did not look at people, he looked down upon them, but when something truly took his fancy it took him with full force. When André truly smiled, he did so not only with his lips but with all of his person. Arnold blushed slightly as he reached for his suitcase overhead and André stood to meet him, offering the fuller coffee he has been handed while touching and tracing what remained of the tattoo which he had afforded Arnold’s exposed bicep.

“That is such a weird lie to tell just in passing,” André squinted as he searched for a pen in the breast pocket of the blazer he let hang alongside his wool coat. “Also, ‘my fellow American?’ Isn’t that something only the president gets to say? Here, wait, if you want, I can fix that,” he offered of Peggy. Arnold nodded and stopped his search to take a seat beside the artist. André study went beyond the girl they had both begun the week thinking they might take to bed at some point. It was objectifying; Arnold was as unused to attention as André was to reciprocation. He ran his fingers through the ex-Londoner’s loosened hair and André again grinned in such a way as to occupy all of Arnold’s defences. Insultingly, he did not even seem aware of his affect. Arnold pulled his hand back and offered his arm in consolation.

“Actually, you may have a point,” he said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever heard that precise construction in another address.”

“My fellow American,” André repeated wryly. “Here I thought you a turncoat.”

“You thought you could turn me, you mean,” Arnold replied with a sudden shame. He had never been with nor desired another man before John André and wondered to what extent his inexperience betrayed him in both intimacy and discourse. The conventions that kept him from a truly shared affection with women did not seem to apply to the same extent; with André, he never had to defend his words in the course of conversation, his enthusiasm was never mistaken for abrasion, and the more these realities found their way into his active thought the more unsure of himself Arnold grew.

André had something of a tragic hero in him – whereas no one, Arnold had long been certain, would have want to cast him in a work of forbidden romance.

He felt out of place; he felt he was exactly where he had always wanted to be in relation to another individual. He wondered if André felt the same way, if he ever had.

“On? Perhaps,” André teased with a smile that told too much. Here, he knew his lines. Arnold felt he might knowingly fall for each and every one he was given.

“There is something of an act to it,” he commented after a few minutes of allowing his mind the discomfort of harbouring the thought. “Dating, I mean – I mean!” he stopped. “Forgive me my forward nature. I’m not a man for delay, John. I don’t know how to flirt quite as you do, I – to be honest I never anticipated have company of your sort, which isn’t to say that I’m uncomfortable with the part of my sexuality you’ve acquainted me with, simply that – just _that_. I’m lost for experience and lost in your charms that I have every reason to suspect will prove false should certain matters not be clarified post-haste.”

“Are we dating or dose the gentleman accuse me of engaging in courtship?” John laughed. “I’ve had more sex than relationships … of any sort, really. Most of this is as new of a territory for me as you suggest it is for you, but that there be no question as to motive, I can’t recall the last time I’ve been this earnest about anything or anyone,” he paused. “When I … thought to make the Secret Santa a little more interesting, before I knew you as being anyone beyond another obnoxious sales associate … it took me hours to compose small missives that have seemed to flow like water since first our glasses clinked against one another’s on Wednesday after work. You are a difficult person – you make it impossible for me to be anyone else but myself when I am around you. I am intrigued at your intensity and honesty and find them worthy of aspiration. If it seems to you somehow that I am saying everything right, it is admittedly my intention though not my expectation. But if you are asking, then I’m yours.”

For a brief instant when he had finished speaking, Benedict Arnold thought he literally heard wedding bells begin to ring. He grinned, then frowned upon discovering the source of his mind’s deception.

“Are we going to stop in every small town through which we pass?” he demanded. “When I bought a direct ticket, I did not expect detours in Edge Hill and Prescot and Wigan and where are we now? Lancaster? Lancaster? I’m going to find the conductor. This needs to be fixed,” he announced, standing and resuming his search for a fresh shirt. “At this rate, it will be night before we get to Glasgow and we’ve still to hire a car for the week and pick up a few cooking essentials. And – something decorative. A tree! A big one with all of the trimmings!” Arnold declared, suddenly self-conscious of his vigour. With a sly smile André asked if mistletoe had a place within his grand plans.

 

Despite what he had perceived as delays as opposed to being scheduled stops, the two in fact made it to Glasgow, Tesco, and were on the road to their cabin in the Highlands before dusk settled in the form of dark clouds and it started to rain. Somewhere in route it occurred to Arnold that he might have been less aggressive in demanding André’s admission, less aloof in his initial verbal response.

 John André could wonderful company when not in the passenger seat. The man lingered at rest-stops staring at souvenirs, sang along with the radio and otherwise engaged Arnold in circular arguments over snobbish subjects. He loved him still. As the day grew dark and they were more then well underway, the rental’s inbuilt GPS gave out and they quickly discovered that location had rendered their mobiles equally useless. Navigating by the seldom street signs proved more of a challenge than either man was happy to admit, but a few miles before reaching their holiday home, Arnold, recalling the last few hours of argument found a truth in everything André had said on the train.

“Could you possibly be any dafter?” the Englishman accused as they again found themselves coming to opposite conclusions while staring at the same map.

“We are very much dating,” Arnold conceded at long last. André responded with an obnoxious, alluring smile.

How Arnold loathed him, how he loved him, how easily those abstracts blurred and blended underway.

 

It was pouring by the time they got to the cabin, making the task of removing the tree from the cartop harder than it otherwise needed be. They spoke of cultural contributors to climate change rather than the white Christmas they were not having, neither able to fully commit to a single stance on the topic of pollution versus poverty, but both in agreement that they would do well to warm themselves with tea before opening a bottle of wine to celebrate their arrival. Inside, André cooked water while Arnold carried the last of the bags into the room. Upon finding that a cuppa was not going to cut it, they shared a shower to chase the chill from their bones. Arnold smirked at the amount of glitter still sticking to his lover’s slim frame and as punishment was made to suffer a lengthy soliloquy on the same subject, André bemoaning the weeks to come in which his wardrobe would suffer the effects of his stagecraft.

Attempting to silence him with a kiss proved to be in error – their tongues waltzed with one another until the water began to run cold. Towelling off, Arnold remarked in jest that the transfer of the sparkle was worse than the performance itself, creating a quiet indignation in André which Arnold would have rather appreciated whist driving but found entirely unsettling in the bedroom.

André draped himself in a silken robe to Arnold’s proper flannel pyjamas, and expressing his aversion to leaving the luggage where it lay, began unpacking. Arnold smiled in spite of the near silence his careless abrasion had created, had never known anyone to do such in a hotel or rental. It was as though John André truly meant to stay with him despite all of his personal failings.

 

* * *

 

After their shower, Arnold had immediately tasked himself to set up the tree, which proved nearly impossible with the aid of plyers to help screw the trunk into the new stand.

André offered his help to continued dismissal, Arnold (perhaps questioning his own masculinity which often went comically overstated in and of itself) refusing his assistance, assured against the logic that prior experience might have otherwise afforded that the situation was in hand, same as he had each and every time André had pleaded with him to pull over and ask for directions while they two were underway.

After unpacking, he busied himself with hanging garland and mistletoe around the door frames, mulling a cheap bottle of wine on the stovetop with a premeasured spice assortment curtesy of Dr Oetker, lighting a fire log and fiddling with the radio to find a station playing Christmas music until he came on a better idea.

Arnold remained in the corner, curing the tree, the season and most especially the stand as his mulled wine grew cold, ignored in its mug as were along with all of the other efforts André had made at transforming the otherwise charming cabin into a winter wonderland as the American had indicated some bizarre desire to see done.

“Darling,” André tried, “I have a little surprise.”

“I swear to Christ if it is a pair of plyers or anything that can be used as such -” Arnold continued to cruse below his breath.

“That … is not something I would have thought to pack. I did bring this though,” he said with a small show of pride, enough to annoy Arnold to the point of capturing his attention away from the blasted tree. To André’s mind, his new boyfriend was beginning to take this holiday far too seriously.

“A recorder,” the American stated blandly. André brought the instrument to his lips and for the next three minutes filled the halls with the sort of music he hoped might improve the mood.

When he finished, Arnold continued to sit on the floor, staring at him blankly.

His talents were so woefully underappreciated, even from the one man he had met in Merseyside who shared enough of his intellect and culture as to afford him any regard. “Not to your taste?” André asked, feigning hurt at what he legitimately feared was another rejection. “I’ve never played that for anyone before.”

“I’m not sure what it is you want me to say,” Arnold told him in earnest, sounding genuinely perplexed as he added, “It is a recorder – why _would_ you play at all?”

Although he had done everything within his skillset to correct this particular misconception with regard to the instrument, André fought the urge to smile at how much of a like-minded snob Arnold could prove. He flickered his eyes about the room, tilting his head ever so slightly as he explained with an unnecessary caution, “The piece was composed by novice by the name of John André. His first if I'm not mistaken. You don't have to say anything. A muse needs only to be in order to inspire mortal man to reach for something greater than himself.”

Arnold, unmoved, simply responded, “It was ‘Jingle Bells’.”

To be fair, it indeed had been, but unlike that which was often the case with his acting, André had played the Christmas carol to what one might call perfection, albeit on a children’s’ training instrument with a sound designed at getting mothers to return to the work force. The laughter he tried to contain came out as a snort and before this faux pas had the chance to embarrass him, Arnold shared his smile.

“You seek to insult yet you offer a standing ovation,” André observed of the American’s pyjama bottoms.

“Come hither, I’ll give you something to blow,” Arnold challenged.

“And you told me that you didn’t know how to flirt,” André teased as he helped his new boyfriend to rise, quick to return the trousers to the floor where they most assuredly belonged.

“In that self-same conversation I compared you to a Casanova,” Arnold reminded him, “which clearly can’t be the case as your seduction takes the form of a _recorder_. I’ll admit to my errors of judgement.”

“It worked though,” André said as he stroked Arnold’s hardened cock, tightening his grip ever so slightly until the American closed his eyes, letting out a small sound of pleasure before returning to his usual criticism.

“John, do you ever shut up?” he suggested. André was not much of an actor, but he could take direction and allowed his lover to lead him to his knees.

 

* * *

 

In the morning the house still smelt of the s’mores Arnold had taught him to make in the fireplace, even after André had started a pot of coffee and the darker aromas began to mingle in the air.

A week ago, he had been busy with his plans to undo an office aggravation through a staggered series of pranks that in the end revealed him and found him here, on a weekend getaway made all the more romantic by the weather outside. Overnight, the rain had turned to snow and the countryside was dusted white with flurries that continued to fall despite the sun that broke between the cloud cover. If it kept up, by the afternoon there would be enough to build a proper snowman of the kind Arnold likely knew from Connecticut winters.

André turned his attention back to the cottage, thinking of home sickness and wanderlust, imagining spending the next two days as they had the night before and walking into town to visit a pub on Boxing Day and returning throughout the week doing much as the would anywhere else in the world; cafés and bookstores and runs through a local park with winter calories adding to the incentive. He smiled to himself, thinking about how Peggy had laughingly called the man who had since won his heart a ‘buffoon’ before this all had a chance to begin. She had been right. Benedict Arnold was brash, course, over-eager and tended to over-compensate in every respect. He wanted appreciation, attention and a sense of dignity above all else, but then, this was true of André himself as well – in the end, it was true of everyone.

Arnold was not particularly charmed by most of his armature attempts towards the fine arts but he humoured them all the same, attending his performance when no one else would despite whatever animosity he had held for him walking in. John André could not have been given a better present than finding a familiar face in the audience. He smiled and blushed at the memory and many of the others he had made recently. He heard the floorboard give a slight screech as his lover’s feet met it, following the creaks made by the weight of his muscular frame on unfinished wood in anticipation until Arnold emerged in the bedroom doorframe, asking André if he had already made coffee before offering any proper form of greeting.

“Good morning,” André smiled. “It is finished. I’ll pour you a mug, but first, come here. You are going to have your perfect Christmas after all.”

“My perfect Christmas starts with a cup of -”

“Just come to the window,” André demanded without humour.

Arnold obeyed, first pulling him in for a kiss before his eyes opened upon the budding snowscape with childlike delight, stating the obvious with a wonder which André found for once he could not begrudge.

“It’s snowing!” Arnold went to the door as though he needed to test the assessment while still in his slippers. André, still in nothing more than a silk robe, walked instead into the kitchen and poured the coffee the way he remembered Arnold’s tasting the day prior (and adding a shot of amaretto to his own.)

“The house really looks beautiful,” Arnold commented. “It truly is the perfect Christmas, the sort I’ve always dreamed of having.”

“I think Christmas is weird as far as major holidays go,” André mused awkwardly. “Think on it – it is the only one that is fixed. Easter is on a different Sunday each spring, Chanukah, Passover, Ramadan, Eid are all whenever they feel like being -”

Arnold shook his head and argument began anew. “Easter is always the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox which is fixed as March 21, the Hebrew and Hijri calendars are both lunar -”

“The Hebrew calendar is lunisolar,” André corrected, “but that wasn’t my point. Christmas was invented for Romans to replace Saturnalia as a midwinter commercial stimulus. I never saw any point to it - buying things more for bragging rights at having done so than with respect to the individuals themselves. The whole regiment of it, the stress and sales and social pressure – everyone pretending to themselves and to the world at this idea of human decency because the managed to save ten percent on something they would have otherwise never purchased, it is just so -”

“That there is no debate later, this is why you make for a terrible Angle Gabriel,” Arnold rolled his eyes. “That and the body glitter which is own all over our sheets.”

“Point taken,” André nodded. “Sorry, I was leading somewhere with this. Since university, I always thought of the holidays as being fine for kids and for seniors … but you, you make me remember some of the magic. I’m glad we bought the tree and I’m excited to decorate it with you.”

“I think I’ll leave it to you alone. You’ve proven those talents beyond any doubt, here, back at my flat – I never … thanked you, for that, so – yeah, once I recovered from the surprise, it was quite nice, the improvements you took it upon yourself to make,” Arnold stubbled. “The tree is yours. I wanted it for its own sake. I never had one growing up and my ex-wife brought a plastic one into our marriage which I’m only now beginning to appreciate years after.”

“I think we are in it together now.”

“That may well be.”

André took a sip of his coffee and tried to readjust. “I was thinking about what you said a few nights ago, about home sickness and wanderlust – and I’m happy … to be here with you. Holidays and all.”

 

The couple would continue to spend Christmas at the same cottage, long after individual opportunities saw an end to their being colleagues - Arnold opening his own business which he found both personally and fiscally rewarding and André sitting the exam needed to work at HM Revenue and Customs, a position that allowed him to do the same work he was in the public sector for roughly the same pay, but as a bureaucrat without the looming concern that he could be let go on the grounds of personal conduct. Neither was again made to participate in morale-boosting nonsense with politically correct nomenclature.

Within a few years, adopted children would take on many of the roles he once occupied in church plays and replace him in playing Christmas carols on thirteen-quid recorders, Benedict never betraying the same disapproving snobbery at their attempts, though John would sometimes need to nudge him, reminding him to smile. “It is Christmas,” he would tease. “It very much is,” his husband would reply, often through clenched teeth until the first snow fell, reminding them both how lucky they were to have found all of the trappings of a happy married life in having drawn one another in a ‘Holiday Gift Exchange’ –

that ought to have been called ‘Secret Santa’, or so André would always maintain.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realise I am in a unique position to settle a debate. Sometimes I get asked during Ramadan if fasting is difficult, to which I always give the universally agreed upon answer ‘The first three days are, but then you just get used it to, and the only thing you miss is water.’ Which is _true_ but offers nothing as a point of comparison. Okay – word up: Ramadan is not half so hard as Christmas, which is also a month-long festivity (if you realise it or not) but rather than abstaining for a few hours, you guys do everything at once on top of an already hectic schedule and honestly? Full respect. It is not even the day-of and I’m already so done.
> 
> Amazing that I mange to get a Christmas fic out every year. I *hope* next year’s “special” will just be the first few chapters of Hide and Sequel which are set during the festive season, but if not, I have the idea about President Trump refusing to pardon a turkey and Caleb Brewster taking matters into his own hands –  
> I love the holidays in theory at least. Anyway. Notes.
> 
> **Quotes**
> 
> **“I dabble”** and everything in the exchange around **“The piece was composed by novice by the name of John André[…]”** not involving a recorder being called out for what it is were borrowed from the series.
> 
>  **“Like one of my French girls”** is modified from the 1997 film **Titanic** which I’ve never seen but looks to be the sort of thing André would watch with a date in the same way in which he described The Notebook to Hewlett in the first chapter.
> 
> **British Specialties**
> 
> **Walkers** are by and large something only continentals are impressed with (maybe because our only flavour of crisp is ‘Hungarian’ and those crazy Brits have added ‘Brussel Spout’ (Rosenkohl) to their seasonal culinary crisp selection). Their bags are not recyclable, and there was a recent protest initiative (read: meme) to post emptied bags to the company, which the Royal Mail discouraged, asking the public to please put them in an envelope first as they had a legal obligation to deliver them but they could not go through the sorting machines as they were.
> 
> I am sad to say that there is no longer any direct **train route between Liverpool and Glasgow** save through the same power of fiction that I guess saw André and Arnold fall in love and go on to have a happy X-mas/life together. Though the happy couple did not have to change trains in Wigan I kept the detail of the every-five-minute-stops for an authentic feel. ;)
> 
>  **Just to Save You the Trouble of Translation**  
>  (as I had to look this up myself …)
> 
> A **recorder** is the same dreadful instrument we call a **Blockflöte**. Maryassassina, Reinette – do you understand Arnold’s anguish? I really don’t get how André turned such into sex either in the show or here, but you know – suspend your disbelief, I suppose.
> 
>   **Theatre**
> 
>  **Woyzeck** is a stage play written by **Georg Büchner** and various editors who posthumously finished the incomplete work after his death. It details the dehumanizing effects on the titular figure as brought on by an experimental doctor and the military, **peas are involved** – but you know what. S---. I have to stop. I am suddenly acutely aware of why it is I just don’t write love stories (and on the occasions I do I drop direct references like this for no discernible reason.) If you were wondering though at which work of drama I personally severely misunderstood as a teenager – Kabale und Liebe (Love and Intrigue) which I uh … legit thought was a comedy. ( _And still kind of do!_ )
> 
> Alright, that is enough of that.
> 
> If you’ve time for it let me know what you thought, otherwise - Happy Christmas everyone!


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